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COHRIGHT DEPOSm 



Getting More 
Drug Store Business 



BY 

FRANK FARRINGTON 

IL 

Author of "Making a Drug Store Pay," "Talks by 

the Old Storekeeper," "Meeting Chain Store 
Competition," " Meeting Mail Order Compe- 
tition," "Store Management Complete," 
" Retail Advertising Complete," etc. 



SPATULA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
Boston 14, Mass. 






Copyright, 1922, By 
Spatula Publishing Company 



SEP I i IS22 



0CI.A681754 



CONTENTS 



Chapter I PAGES 

Bringing in New Customers 9-15 

Necessity for new customers. New families in town 
and how to interest them. Increasing acquaintances. 
Premium plan. Business in new kinds of goods. 

Chapter II 

The Neighborhood Drug Store 16-22 

Advantages and disadvantages of situation. Price 
considerations and inducements. Personal letter to 
customers. Making friends. The personal element. 

Chapter III 

Department Store Competition 23-30 

Cut prices and exaggerated values. " Challenging " 
competition. Druggists as experts. Advertising 
your advantages. Capitalizing your individuality. 

Chapter IV 

Some Matters of Management 31-38 

Hours of work. Economy. Order and system. 
Returned goods. Cash selling. Price cutting. 
Delivery. Having enough change. Generosity. 

Chapter V 

Does Early Closing Pay ?..,>.... 39-42 
Jealousy between stores. Lines that sell early or 
late. The evening trade. Early closing and the 
little fellow, 

3 



CONTENTS 

Chapter VI Pages 

Making Children Like Your Store .... 43-53 
Children as customers now and by and by. Taking 
pains with children. Pleasing parents through their 
children. Windows to attract children. Children 
at the fountain. The trade of the school children. 



Chapter VII 

Getting the Farmers' Trade 54-64 

Farmers like to buy where they know somebody. 
Going out among farmers to extend acquaintance. 
Reading farm papers. Government bulletins. Lines 
farmers buy freely. Mail order competition. Your 
Mailing List. Veterinary remedies and insecticides. 

Chapter VIII 

Preparing for Spring Trade 65-70 

Getting ready early for the spring business. Making 
the store more attractive. Seasonable lines. 

Chapter IX 

The Motorists' Business 7*-77 

Mailing list of automobile owners. A letter to 
motorists. Candy and fountain motor trade. Inter- 
esting tourists with road information. 

Chapter X 

Selling Dental Supplies 78-84 

What dentists use. Letter to dentists. Getting the 
dentists' support and commendation for goods. 
Dentifrices. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter XI pages 

Selling Olive Oil 85-91 

Its food value. Widespread sale. Styles of pack- 
ages. Care of stock. Advertising and window dis- 
plays suggested. 

Chapter XII 

More Hot Water Bottle Sales 92-98 

The best selling season. Opening sale and display. 
A test of strength. Some hot water bottle adver- 
tisements. 

Chapter XIII 

Speeding up Cigar Sales 99-106 

The average drug store cigar trade. Care of cigars 
and cigar case. Porto Rican and other stock. How 
to please cigar patrons. Some advertisements. 

Chapter XIV 
The Candy Case 107-114 

Advantages of well selected stock. Display methods. 
Package or bulk goods ? Candy as a continual seller. 
Advertising and sampling. Displays. Novelties. 
School trade. 

Chapter XV 
Selling More Soap 11 5-1 19 

An experience in buying. Medicated u Specialty" 
soaps. Introducing the specialty soap idea. Ar- 
rangement and display. 

Chapter XVI 

Who Will Sell the Sundries ? 120-125 

Catalogue competition inevitable. How shall you 
fight it? Your advantage over the mail order house. 
Specimen of advertisement. Manufacturer's help. 

s 



CONTENTS 

Chapter XVII pages 

Making Disinfectants Sell 126-134 

Disinfectants profitable. The best sellers. Free 
advertising matter. Featuring the " Prevention " 
idea. Use of bulletins on prevalent diseases. Phy- 
sicians' cooperation. When to put on the campaign. 
Samples of advertising. 

Chapter XVIII 

Making the Fountain Successful .... 135-146 
Little things that count. How to serve straws. The 
back bar and mirror. Keeping up the stock. Care 
of ice cream. Appearance of soda clerks. Music. 
The school children's trade. Pertinent paragraphs 
on the business. 

Chapter XIX 

Helping the Christmas Sales 147-153 

Advertising service. Music in the store. Lighting 
the store. A comfortable store. The Christmas 
spirit. 

Chapter XX 

Christmas Sales from Regular Stock . . 154-162 
Pushing the goods that are not special holiday 
stock. What these goods are. The goods men buy. 
Candy and cigar trade. 

Chapter XXI 

The Telephone as a Sales Aid .... 163-172 
Mechanical telephone service. Rudeness actual or 
apparent. People we don't patronize by telephone. 
How not to answer the 'phone. How to please peo- 
ple over the wire. 

6 



CONTENTS 

Chapter XXII Pages 

Message to the Druggist's Wife .... 173-178 
The wife's interest in the business. How she can 
help make the store more profitable. Woman's 
judgment good in buying. Reading the drug jour- 
nals. Cooperation. 

Chapter XXIII 

To Have the Best Clerks 179-183 

The usual way of getting them. Helping the clerks 
to make good. Knowing about clerks' family con- 
nections. Proper equipment for the clerks' use. 

Chapter XXIV 

A Chapter for Clerks 184-194 

Salesmanship. How to make customers feel friendly. 
Shaking hands. How to spend time to advantage. 
Dress. Which goods to push. " I don't know." 

A Catechism for Druggists 195 

" What is a druggist ? " 



CHAPTER I 

Bringing in New Customers 

The druggist who counts his trade safe and sure 
because a large number of people are steady, de- 
pendable customers, will be surprised in due time. 
No matter how many families there are trading at 
a store regularly, coming there for everything they 
need in the way of drug store goods, no matter how 
much they like that store or how willing they are 
to give it all their patronage, the store cannot sub- 
sist indefinitely upon their business. 

Any druggist can discover the necessity for secur- 
ing new trade, for adding new families to his list, 
by a very simple process. By making a memoran- 
dum at the beginning of the year of a hundred good 
customers, taking them as they run, either by alpha- 
betical plan or by streets, and then at the end of 
twelve months going over his list and eliminating 
those who have dropped out for unavoidable reasons 
— death, removal, change of store, etc. — a very fair 
idea may be gained of the length of time that any 
one line of customers will last. 

Out of that hundred it will be surprising if less 
than 15 or 20 per cent, drop out. A loss of ten out 
of the hundred is probably a very conservative esti- 
mate in the average town. That means that the 
business of the store would endure just ten years 
without the addition of new trade. 

Of course, there are many things that might 
occur to reduce the number of customers in a much 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

faster ratio, and the store that developed no new 
trade and secured no transient business, in all prob- 
ability would not last more than a very few years. 

This should mean something to every druggist 
who is looking into the future and hoping for greater 
things. It should mean that there is a constant 
need for hustling after the new people who come to 
town and after the trade that is now going to other 
stores. 

Of course, the old customers are important. With- 
out picking out individual instances it cannot be said 
that the trade of a new customer is any more im- 
portant than that of an old one. A customer is a 
customer. 

But a rather different line of work is needed to 
secure new trade from that used for holding the old 
customers in line. And in order that a business 
may grow it requires new people to be coming in 
with their money every day. 

There is no trade that is any easier to get than 
that of newcomers in town. It is easy because the 
newcomer is without fear or prejudice and is ready 
to trade, or to start trading at least, wherever incli- 
nation calls, and that is likely to be wherever the 
first invitation comes from. It is often true, how- 
ever, that the competitor with the least reputation, 
the fewest scruples and perhaps the poorest stock 
has as good a chance of getting it as the oldest and 
most successful store. 

This shows that while stock, reputation, ability, 
caution and precaution all help to hold old custom- 

10 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ers, they have little to do directly with getting new 
ones from among the newcomers in town. They do 
help. Everything helps. But the outside appear- 
ance of the store and the methods used to call the 
newcomer's attention to the store are what get him 
in first. 

In any town of ordinary size the druggist ought 
to have a method of obtaining and listing the names 
of the people who are coming into the town to live. 
This may be best carried out perhaps by studying 
the local newspapers and making note of the names 
of families moving in, of workmen, clerks, employees 
of all sorts, school teachers, of any one who is com- 
ing to the town to stay for any length of time. 

Then there should be prepared a stock form of 
circular or folder attractively made up, calling atten- 
tion to the advantages of the store and giving its 
location, together with information as to the lines 
of goods carried and an offer to deliver at once any- 
thing needed or to call and get any order the party 
might wish to give. By keeping these folders ready 
to mail, it would be but a small task to address them 
and mail them promptly as new names are added to 
the list. 

The new family in town is in a position to appre- 
ciate any little attention or courtesy that may be 
shown, and in many instances the little things that 
a dealer is expected to do and is willing to do for 
any regular customer, simply as a matter of adver- 
tising or business, will be accepted as something 
more if done for a stranger. 

ii 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

The interest thus shown in strangers should be 
endowed with something more than a mere finan- 
cial quality. The new family or the new individual 
may well be given a welcome hand by the druggist 
as a representative member of a community that is 
glad to see new people coming in. He should feel 
a human interest in any stranger just as a matter 
of humanity, and the fact that it will prove profit- 
able to his pocketbook ought to make it a pretty 
easy thing to do. 

It is not difficult to learn to know the newcomer. 
If the proprietor cannot get a sight of the head of 
the new family, let him give the clerks the job of 
getting to know that person by sight, with instruc- 
tions to give to any one in the store selling him 
goods, his name when he comes in, so that he can 
be called by it and feel that he already has an estab- 
lished identity. 

It is a safe bet that when a man goes to a new 
town to live, if he is called by name in the first drug 
store he enters, he will do his trading at that store 
ever after, unless caused to leave by strong and 
specific reasons. There is something about calling 
a man by name in a town where he feels lost and 
alone that gets him right away. If he drops into a 
drug store and makes a small purchase and before 
he leaves is addressed by name, he will go out feel- 
ing two inches taller every time. 

No customer, whether stranger or friend and 
acquaintance, should be regarded by the druggist 
as a mere animated pocket-book. That is not good 

12 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

hospitality, and moreover, it is mighty poor 
business. 

Of course getting new trade is not all getting the 
trade of strangers in town. There is the trade the 
other stores already have and there is the trade that 
nobody has been getting, trade that can be had by 
stimulating the demand for such goods as people 
have been using but little or not at all. 

All the kinds of advertising that are used to hold 
the trade already secured have a tendency to help 
get other trade, but special inducements are usually 
necessary in order to draw in rauch business from 
the competing stores. 

These inducements may take the form of special 
sales, of premium giving and other schemes. It 
should be remembered, however, that such schemes 
must be made to bring in new customers or else 
they will amount to a simple paying of a premium for 
business that would have belonged to the store any- 
way. If any kind of a premium scheme is adopted 
for use for any length of time, it ought to be well 
considered in advance and its cost calculated, and 
the percentage it will add to the cost of doing busi- 
ness figured very closely. If the scheme will not 
produce enough new business to enable the drug- 
gist to pay its cost out of the additional profits and 
leave a good additional margin, it is a waste of time 
and money. And it must not only do this this year, 
but it must continue to do it. It is rarely that a 
premium or gift scheme is necessary to help hold 
the old trade, and it is not profitable if its costs has 

13 



Gettino More Drug Store Business 

to come out of the profits of the business as it was 
before the plan was adopted. 

As long as there is more trade to be had, a pre- 
mium plan is a good working way of getting it — if 
it is worked properly. One great trouble with pre- 
mium plans, though, is that after being put in oper- 
ation they are simply allowed to run themselves. 
No effort is made to bring them to the attention 
of new people, and they soon simmer down to a 
point where they are used only by the steady cus- 
tomers of the store, and here it distinctly does not 
pay. A premium plan needs plenty of advertising, 
continuous advertising, just as much as if it were a 
business of itself. 

One of the cleanest ways of increasing a business 
is that of developing wholly new trade. There are 
all the while coming on the market new goods or 
improved goods which take the place of some estab- 
lished article or which cater to a brand new taste. 

The bicycle is an instance of this. The automo- 
bile is another. The safety razor is still another. 
These articles have developed into big businesses 
without a corresponding loss by any other business. 
They have made places for themselves and created 
a new demand. Along with these have also been 
created demands for supplies to go with them. 
These remarkable successful instances point out an 
idea. 

It has been said that there is nothing new under 
the sun, but this does not apply to our case, for 
there is scarcely a month that something new may 

14 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

not be found in the advertising pages of the maga- 
zines and trade papers, too, which should prove a 
good business getter in the pharmacy, and which 
will not have to displace anything else in order to 
create a demand for itself. 

These new things may easily be discovered by 
the live, wide awake druggist, and while he perhaps 
may not care to invest much money in such things, 
he can still afford to take a chance and stock them 
a little and push them a good deal. The vacuum 
bottle was just such an item, and the dealer who first 
stocked these novelties and pushed them in most 
towns succeeded in getting the cream of the trade 
on them, and in many instances was able in this 
way to get into his store people who had never been 
there before, but who came to see or to buy some- 
thing they could not get elsewhere. 

It is a big start on getting the trade of a new 
customer if that customer can be lured into the 
store once. It requires ingenious advertising and 
clever planning to get people in who are not regular 
patrons, but when they are once in it is easy to 
treat them well and to make them want to come 
again. It is easy, but it is not done by every drug- 
gist. As a rule, the things that are easy to do are 
the things that we do not do. If we are assigned a 
difficult method of producing a certain result we are 
more likely to go ahead with it than if we are shown 
a way so easy that it does not seem worth trying. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

The Neighborhood Drug Store 

One thing the drug store in the business section 
of the town does not have to worry about. It does 
not have to find ways to get people to come to that 
vicinity to buy, because that is where the most of 
the people do a considerable portion of their shop- 
ping. 

The neighborhood drug store is up against a dif- 
ferent proposition. No great number of people 
pass its doors in the natural course of their daily 
travels. There is perhaps no other store near by 
to help draw people that way. The druggist so 
situated has to play pretty nearly a lone hand. 

And yet a good many young druggists just starting 
in business cannot afford to rent stores in the busiest 
part of the town because rents are high there and 
the stores are in a more expensive class. Many 
young men must be satisfied with a neighborhood 
drug store or none. 

The side street situation offers a fairly good sized 
store, usually with a nice enough front, at a rent 
that is within the means of the man with little 
means. The trade is distributed through the day 
evenly, without rush hours, thus enabling the han- 
dling of it with a minimum of help. 

When the druggist opens his neighborhood store, 
however, he is at once confronted with the problem 
of how to get people to come there. Not enough 
perhaps pass by the store to make a profitable busi- 

16 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ness if he secured their trade altogether. He must 
bring people his way from all parts of the adjacent 
neighborhood. 

It is easy enough to say that the neighborhood 
druggist may offer price inducements to get the 
trade, but that is not the answer. Mere price cutting 
is never the road to a business success, and anyway, 
there are stores enough in town already where prices 
are cut to the bone, and the neighborhood druggist 
needs a profit on his goods, perhaps more profit 
than the downtown store instead of less, because 
he has a small turnover. 

Still, by reducing the variety of stock, as may be 
done in the store located where the demands are less 
diverse, and by buying with care to keep the stock 
as low as it can be kept and yet supply the trade, 
expenses can be kept down to where the neighbor- 
hood store will be able to sell cheaply, and pernaps 
can handle some side lines at prices lower ^han 
competitors. 

At all events, if the neighborhood druggist is to 
undersell or try to undersell other stores, he should 
make his price just enough lower to effect a saving 
of a cent or two, and avoid cutting enough to attract 
attention. The bigger downtown stores will not 
pay any attention to one neighborhood druggist 
cutting a cent or two off from the price of a dollar 
article, but that cent lower figure may be capitalized 
just as well with the neighborhood trade as a ten 
cent saving could be. 

Every little saving that is effected should be 

17 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

brought to the attention of the customers by telling 
them personally when they make the purchase or 
by putting a little slip of white paper in the parcel, 
writing on it with a blue pencil, " You are buying 
this two cents cheaper than the downtown price/ ' 

A constant reiteration of little price savings will 
inevitably have its effect in impressing the neigh- 
borhood people with the fact that they can buy as 
well near home as they can downtown. 

The neighborhood druggist always has the oppor- 
tunity of writing letters to his possible customers. 
To this end he ought to accumulate a list of the 
families around him, including all possible customers. 
This list ought to be classified as to mothers, school 
children, society folks, motor owners, smokers, young 
men, young ladies, etc. It ought to reach out to all 
people who live near the store and to all who do 
and might go and come by that street. 

Time may be taken to write a few letters every 
day, writing them in long hand if no typewriter is 
available, and making them actual personal business 
letters. Suppose the druggist writes a letter, some- 
thing like the one below, to as many people each 
day as he has time. In a year he would reach hun- 
dreds of possible customers. 

Dear Madam : — You no doubt realize that there is money 
to be saved on household expenses by buying carefully. 

That means that if you will take pains to find out where 
you can buy to the best advantage you can make your money 
go farther and get more with it. 

It costs us less to run our store than it would if we had a 

18 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

big place down on Broadway. Of course, we can sell a little 
cheaper on that account. 

You have been paying ..c for white castile soap if you 
have bought it downtown lately. We are able to sell you 
the same good white castile for . .c. 

How about moth preventives for keeping the woolens and 
furs not in use ? The best thing we know of for that purpose 

is and we price this at . . c, which saves you a 

little money over any reliable article of a similar sort sold 
downtown. 

It is not our practice to make leaders of a few well known 
articles and make up the difference on others. We know 
what it costs us to do business and we base our charges on 
that cost. 

We are not running a freak or a cut rate store, but we are 
here to give you the kind of goods you want and sell them 
as cheaply as we can afford to do. 

Isn't it a convenience to have a good drug store right in 
the neighborhood ? We are here to serve you in any way 
we can and to save you money and time and carfare. 

Come by our store when you can conveniently do so and 
you will nearly always see in our windows some money saving 
suggestion. 

Yours very truly, 



People will come out of their way to trade with 
the druggist who makes it an object for them to do 
so. It is not necessary that it always be a financial 
object. 

You who run the neighborhood drug store do 
much of the selling yourself. You have not reached 
the stage where you sit back in an office chair 
behind a wire fence and leave it to others to meet 
your customers. With you a customer is a personal 

19 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

visitor whom you meet at the door when you can 
and with whom you part at the door. Did you ever 
stop to think that that is just what most buyers 
like ? 

When you go into a store to purchase, don't you 
like best to do business with one of the firm instead 
of with a clerk. Well, there probably isn't a house- 
wife in your neighborhood who wouldn't be willing 
to take a few extra steps to buy in a drug store 
where she would always do business with the pro- 
prietor. She knows he will take a greater personal 
interest in her purchases, and she will buy of him 
in preference to patronizing a big downtown store, 
where she is unknown to the clerks. 

The personal element is today getting and holding 
trade in thousands of neighborhood stores and sub- 
urban shops, while the big stores are trying to fight 
this condition with more elaborate displays, more 
expensive delivery systems and deeper price slashing. 

If you make a personal friend of the customer, 
that customer will come out of the way several 
blocks to buy from you, and she will tell her friends 
about your store, and bring them with her when 
she comes. The personal element is the best busi- 
ness getting proposition the small store can develop. 
If you are a crabbed, uncongenial cuss, a poor mixer 
and a business-is-business chap with no real interest 
in your fellow human beings, you have not in you 
the making of a success in a store around the corner, 
or in a small store anywhere. The only place for 
you is in some business where you do not come 

20 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

into contact with folks at all, but do your work 
with machines. 

I said it is not always the financial side of the 
matter that brings people out of their way to pat- 
ronize a store. Service is the big word nowadays 
in merchandising, and service is something you can 
give. 

You can give the customer the personal attention 
she wants. You can see that the clerk gives each 
individual that attention too, because the clerk is 
working right under your nose. You can see that 
every parcel that goes out is properly wrapped and 
tied. You can see that goods that are not exactly 
in perfect condition are sold for just what they are. 
You can meet the automobile customer at the curb, 
and you can carry her parcels out for her. You can 
provide a chair for the tired woman, and you can 
pass out a cigar to the man you want to favor. You 
can make yourself to a degree a professional adviser 
of the families who patronize you. You can put 
yourself in a position not very far removed from 
that of family physician if you like. You can make 
people see that conferring with you about their 
drug store purchases means to save money on them 
in one way or another. 

If you think you can start in a neighborhood 
store and develop a business on the waiting basis, 
you are doomed to disappointment. The old saying 
that " Everything comes to him who waits/' does 
not apply to building up a business in a neighbor- 
hood drug store. You will have to go after the 

21 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

trade, and since you cannot afford to go after it 
with costly advertising, since the newspapers are 
not available for a neighborhood store, you will 
have to use other means. Use your personality, 
your windows, your ability to write letters, and add 
to those all the helps the makers of well-known 
goods will give you — because you will have to have 
such goods if you are going to get or hold the trade 
of people intelligent enough to know its standard. 



22 



CHAPTER III 

Department Store Competition 

The competition of the department store affords 
one of the most perplexing problems with which the 
druggist in many places has to contend. 

Many department stores carry large stocks of a 
great variety of the lines stocked also by the drug- 
gists. They specialize in perfumes and toilet goods, 
rubber goods, stationery, all sorts of druggists' 
sundries. These lines they advertise in such a way 
as to convey the impression that they can undersell 
the druggist, and they even go so far at times as to 
intimate that the druggist asks exorbitant profits. 

This is scarcely fair and square competition, but 
we cannot ignore a competitor merely because he 
does not play fair. He may seriously undermine 
public confidence in our business if we let him go 
his way undefied. 

The druggist finds the department store offering 
two kinds of competition, both based on price. The 
first is the cut price on the standard advertised arti- 
cle, which everybody recognizes and knows is a 
bargain. The second is the price on the article 
of unknown quality, so described to make it appear 
to be the same quality for which the druggist asks a 
higher price. 

The effect of such advertising of cut prices in dis- 
crediting the druggist with his patrons has to be 
considered. The situation cannot be dismissed with 
a simple condemnation of the department store man 

23 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

as a fraud. If the Big Store is doing its best to 
make the druggist appear a robber when it comes 
to prices on lines carried by both, something must 
be done to offset that sort of work. 

They say paper will lie still while you print any- 
thing on it. It is an easy matter for a department 
store to advertise hot-water bottles, as specially 
priced at 98 cents, value $1.75, and, as far as the 
public is concerned, they may get away with the 
exaggerated value. A conscienceless department 
store, and let us be thankful these are becoming less 
frequent, can give any kind of values it likes in the 
druggists' sundries line without fear of the people in 
general knowing much about the truthfulness of the 
proposition. The public cannot tell the difference 
in hot-water bottles, tooth brushes, hair and nail 
brushes, fountain syringes, and countless other 
things, until it is probably too late to complain. 

A druggist who was troubled with a particularly 
virulent kind of department-store competition, which 
was constantly trying to make it appear that the 
druggist was a robber, came right out into the open 
with a little plan of his own which had a tendency 
to draw the claws of this competitor. 

He devoted one large show case to meeting this 
competition. He put a sign above it, " Competition 
Department." Throughout the case he used little 
cards reading, "We Challenge Competition/ ' "We 
Undersell Department Stores/' " Our Prices as Low 
as Anybody's," etc. 

In this show case was carried a constantly chang- 

24 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ing stock of such goods as the department store was 
advertising, priced at their prices or lower. These 
were goods of the department-store class, bought 
cheap to enable the druggist to compete with that 
form of competition on an even basis. 

Whenever the department store advertised a 
special value, the druggist was right there with what 
he showed to be a better value, a similar article at 
an even lower price. He went the department store 
one better on price on all the cheap-quality goods. 
He met them on standard goods. He advertised 
that the goods in that case were sold on the depart- 
ment-store plan — anything to make the price look 
cheap. This kind of work had a strong tendency 
to discredit the department-store methods, and even 
to give the department-store a black eye. His news- 
paper advertisements saying that he had a " depart- 
ment where goods were sold on the department-store 
plan " began to get under the belt of the department- 
store people, though there was no chance to com- 
plain publicly of the method of getting even with 
them. The result was a gradual discontinuance of 
the objectionable competition. Of course, the big 
store tried to head off that kind of advertising, and 
one local newspaper was influenced to refuse to 
allow the druggist to run such advertisements as ha 
was using, but this only made matters worse for the 
department-store, because the druggist gave full 
publicity to the complaint, and the department store 
was blamed for trying to "muzzle the press. " 

The druggist who finds the department-stores 

25 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

getting his business, needs, first of all, to set about 
developing on the part of the public a confidence in 
his store that cannot be felt in the drug-store depart- 
ment of the big store. The druggist is a professional 
man, and as such is a reliable individual whose 
statements about his goods bear the stamp of knowl- 
edge and reliability. 

The druggist is an expert in his line of goods, and 
he is qualified to tell his customers more about them 
than any department-store salesperson can tell. We 
all know how much the average, or the above-the- 
average salesperson in the department store knows 
about the quality of bristle goods and rubber goods. 
In the department store little or no attention is paid 
to the technical side of the goods — everything is 
commercial. If a customer wants to know why 
English brushes are the best, why the best bristles 
come from Russia, why Japanese brushes are cheap 
in quality, why a red hot-water bottle may be or 
may not be better than a black one, can that cus- 
tomer find out in the department store ? Verily not. 
(Unfortunately, there are many drug stores where 
he cannot find out, either.) 

The department-store salesperson cannot tell much 
about the goods, except the price and such other 
facts as are obvious upon the surface. There is 
really very little inducement save the price for buy- 
ing such goods in a department store. 

The odds are all in favor of your store when it 
comes to the better class of trade. The department- 
store druggists' sundries department gets trade in 

26 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

two instances. It gets some trade from people who 
happen to be passing through the department and 
buy because they see something they want. It gets 
some more trade from people who think they can 
buy the same goods there more cheaply than else- 
where. The former class of trade will naturally 
come to you except when occasional purchases are 
made simply from being where the goods are seen. 
The latter class you must get by showing them 
through your advertising and displays that you can 
sell as cheaply as anyone, quality for quality. Of 
course, when you get the customer into your store, 
you are in a position to give a service that they can- 
not get in the department stores. You ought to be 
able to hold the trade, once it comes your way. 

In addition to advertising your goods, advertise 
that which no department store can advertise, 
because it does not possess it — the qualifications 
for giving the public the services of graduate phar- 
macists in all that they buy in the pharmacy. The 
average drug-store customer knows little or nothing 
about the goods he is buying except what he is told. 
He possesses himself no technical knowledge. He 
buys on the say-so of the seller. Can't you make 
it plain to the people that it is worth while for them 
to seek the store where they can find out anything 
they want to know about what they are buying, 
where they can be certain that the goods are guar- 
anteed on a basis of understanding, and that all 
adjustments will be made with intelligence? 

When people buy drug-store goods, they want to 
27 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

know that they get just they think they are getting. 
They do not know, they have no way of discovering, 
what the actual quality of the goods may be until 
they determine by wear or use. If you are an 
honest druggist, they will feel that they can depend 
upon what they buy because of your professional 
information. Don't leave it for them to find out 
such things for themselves. Advertise your advan- 
tages as an experienced dealer in certain lines rather 
than as a mere middleman. 

There is, of course, redress when a department- 
store purchase goes wrong, but it is not the same as 
the adjustment by a specialist who is himself the 
final judge in the matter, the reputation of whose 
store depends on how he handles adjustments. 

One hold the druggist can get on his customers 
that the department store can scarcely secure is that 
of personal popularity. The personal element counts 
for a great deal in securing and holding trade, and 
it can be made to pull strongly in the case of the 
small store when it does not exist at all in the 
department-store. 

The drug store is representative of the individu- 
ality of the man behind it. It typifies his business 
attributes, his own policies and his methods with his 
customers. People will warm up to an individual 
as they will not to an institution. You, the drug- 
gist on the corner of Main and Second streets, can 
be a distinct personality in the eyes of the public 
around you, not only of your personal acquaintances, 
but of the whole public. 

28 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

You may become known as a liberal druggist, as 
a good man to do business with, as a druggist who 
will make right anything that is not all right, as a 
druggist who knows his stock and who knows all 
about the goods he sells. 

A salesperson behind the sundries counter in the 
department-store might be as well informed as you 
about the business. That person might even become 
known to certain customers as an expert in the line. 
But all that is unlikely to be the case, and even so, 
that salesperson can never develop any such general 
reputation as you can develop. 

It is not enough to possess all the desirable quali- 
ties that a successful druggist should possess. It 
is not enough that your store possess all the desira- 
ble attributes of a successful drug store. These 
things are essential to success, but the success will 
not come in proportion as you and your store possess 
them, but rather in proportion as you advertise the 
possession of them. It is the publicity you give 
such qualities that counts. 

Advertise your knowledge of drug-store goods. 
Advertise your personal attention to the stock and 
to the trade. Advertise the advantages of buying 
at a store personally conducted by an experienced 
druggist, where the buying is done by a man who 
knows all the ins and outs of the lines rather than 
by a general buyer who is merely looking for some- 
thing that can be made to sell by attaching a high 
value and a low price. 

Advertising is what gets the business, and no 
29 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

matter how well your store is run, no matter how 
good service you give or how great values you offer, 
unless you use advertising to get all this before the 
public, it counts for little. 

The department-store naturally uses much larger 
advertising space than you use, but you can proba- 
bly afford to use as much space as that store aver, 
ages for its drug-store lines. Probably you can 
afford to use more space than that. 

Your windows can be devoted to drug-store 
goods all the time, while the department-store 
windows only occasionally are used for that kind 
of stock. You have many advantages, and you 
ought to be able to keep away from the department 
stores all the trade except part of the two classes I 
mentioned. 

Nothing can be done to department-store com- 
petition, or to any other competition, if you are afraid 
of it. You will make absolutely no headway by 
sitting down and complaining about it. Keep think- 
ing what you can do, devising little plans you can 
carry out, little schemes you can operate. 

Keep working to interest people personally in you 
and in your store. See that your employees all take 
the same personal interest. Let no day go by that 
you do not get in a whack at the department store 
in some way. I do not mean a knock, but a stroke 
of work in the form of advertising or display or per- 
sonal effort that will count in your favor as against 
this kind of competition. Keep the thing on your 
mind and keep working at it. 

30 



CHAPTER IV 

Some Matters of Management 

The nature of the hours of work for the employee 
of the store and the hours at which the store should 
be opened or closed is a very important one. In 
some places the clerk's hours are regulated by legis- 
lation or by organization of clerks, but in most in- 
stances the matter is left to the disposition of the 
employer himself. He is the sole arbiter of the 
question. 

Every clerk should have proper hours off for rest 
and recreation. This is not alone for his good. It 
is for the good of the store as well. No over- 
worked and overtired employee can give good serv- 
ice, and a mistake made by a tired drug clerk is 
liable to be vastly more expensive than one made 
by a weary 5 and 10 cent store girl. 

There is enough time in almost every store when 
business is practically at a standstill, so that clerks 
can have time enough out to keep fresh and hours 
enough for recreation. 

Economy. Many of us have had that word drilled 
into us until we hate the sight and sound of it. In 
private life it may not be a pleasant word to con- 
template, but in business life it should not be 
unpleasant, and it should be a part of the daily 
vocabulary of the store. Without economy in the 
store there will have to be plenty of it in the home. 
The omission of economy in one place must be 
made up by supplying it in some other 

3i 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Economy in the big expenses is commonly con- 
ceded to be necessary and no one scouts it, but 
economy in the little things, petty economy, is 
harder to establish. Unthinking clerks sometimes 
brand their employer as stingy when he is merely 
wisely economical. Odd pieces of twine and heavy 
wrapping paper saved ; empty boxes and barrels 
sold instead of being given away ; second-hand bot- 
tles washed up and used for suitable purposes — 
all these and many other things cause the clerk 
trouble, and if he is not the right sort he is likely to 
form a wrong idea of the "old man" from them. 
The wise druggist will explain to his help the neces- 
sity for these economies and seek to secure their 
co-operation in the economies. 

Order and system are among the prime requisites 
for drug store success. Without order there will 
constantly be duplication of orders with resulting 
overstock. No big business pretends to order its 
affairs in any but a systematic form. There must 
be system in every department. System in the 
buying, selling, manufacturing, storing, advertising ; 
in all parts of the store work. 

Just in the simple matter of storing surplus stock, 
if there is not a proper system part of that stock 
will be shoved out ot sight while more of the same 
is ordered, and the surplus does not come to light 
till inventory rolls around — and in some stores that 
is a long time. 

Order is Heaven's first law, it has been said, and 
it might equally well be said that it should be fhe 

32 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

drug store's first law. When nobody knows where 
an article is or whether there is any at all, lack of 
order is at fault and will produce a loss. 

Cleanliness is a part of orderliness and one of the 
surest and steadiest losses in a store is that caused 
every year by dirt. The loss may be small in most 
pharmacies, but it is there and figures in the year's 
statement. 

Loafers sometimes tax the ingenuity of the store 
manager, especially in the rural districts. True 
enough, the drug store loafers are apt to be more 
or less genteel, but they are loafers none the less, 
and no woman cares to enter a drug store to buy 
where a group of young fellows crowd around the 
cigar case or hang over a counter in idle gossip. 

It should be made plain to the more or less inti- 
mate friends of the proprietor and his clerks that 
loafing, even of the most gentlemanly (?) sort, is an 
expense to the store that exceeds the receipts that 
come from the purchases of the loafers themselves. 

Taking back goods is rather different in a drug 
store from what it is in some other stores. There 
are plenty of drug store goods that cannot be put 
back in stock if they are taken back. But there is 
no trouble in a druggist living up to the " money 
back if you want it " motto. Such goods as cannot 
be sold on that basis should be sold with the under- 
standing plainly expressed to the customer that 
they cannot be returned unless imperfect. Such 
proprietary preparations, too, as the manufacturer 
does not guarantee to give satisfaction should not 

33 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

be allowed to go out with the customer thinking 
them accompanied by any guarantee. 

An important part of the managing of the drug 
store is the reading of the drug trade journal. Such 
journals are filled with ideas and suggestions that 
are of a great deal of value. In their pages are 
found methods for securing more trade ; for mak- 
ing more money on the trade in hand ; for doing 
business more easily, etc. In their advertising 
pages are found announcements of new goods and 
new advertising helps. The manager who lets his 
trade papers go unread does not know what a mis- 
take he makes. 

The question of whether to sell goods only for 
cash or to allow extended credit is one that is ever 
before the retail dealer of all sorts. The druggist 
has a better chance to sell for cash than most mer- 
chants. His sales average smaller amounts than 
many stores and there is less inclination to run 
an account at the drug store. We believe that a 
limited credit plan is the best, extending credit for 
thirty days to responsible parties and collecting 
promptly so as to discourage the running of big 
bills, and refusing credit altogether to people who 
are not known or who have shown themselves to 
be poor pay. 

A dollar's worth of goods on the shelf may not 
be money, but neither is a dollar on the book money, 
and sometimes it never becomes money. 

Price cutting and meeting competition demand 
the attention of the store manager constantly. There 

34 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

are always frequent complaints that So and So is 
selling this or that or something else for less money. 
Many of these complaints are founded upon hearsay 
and have no basis in fact. A few are truth. The 
store that would succeed is almost compelled to 
meet prices of competitors in its own neighborhood, 
stores that are really competing for the same trade, 
But we do not advise indiscriminate price slashing, 
nor do we believe in the policy of trying to force a 
cutter out of business by cutting below him. To 
cut below is to invite him to cut further. To meet 
him will hold the trade just as well. There should 
be no delay or hesitation in meeting a new cut any- 
where unless it is not to be met at all. Let it be 
met right at the outset and the fact made pub- 
lic. Even advertise the cut rate, and if possible get 
credit with the public or some of it for having ori- 
ginated it. 

In the matter of delivery, if any delivering is to 
be done, it will pay to do all of it that there is a 
chance for. The druggist should either deliver, and 
do it well and promptly, or else refuse altogether. It 
is profitable usually to make a specialty of deliver- 
ing and make such quick deliveries that many an 
order will come to the drug store that would other- 
wise go to the grocery store. This prompt deliv- 
ery idea is one of the best ways of combating the 
grocery tendency to edge into the drug store lines. 

Delivering only such goods as the customer par- 
ticularly insists shall be sent up has no merit. It 
may keep the customer from doing her trading else- 

35 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

where, but it will not have the merit of attracting 
any one's business. It is far better in this case to 
make a virtue of a necessity than merely to acknowl- 
edge the necessity. Doing just what is absolutely 
necessary to accommodate the public will never give 
them a warm spot in their hearts for any store. 
People like to be accommodated as if it were a 
pleasure to do it. 

Anyone who ever went into a store to make a 
twenty-five cent purchase with only a five dollar 
bill in hand realizes the unpleasantness of having 
to wait while the clerk looks for change among the 
neighboring stores. It seems a little thing for a 
store to keep enough change in the money drawer 
to take care of any ordinary bill that may come 
along. It is a little thing and not a difficult one, 
but how many smaller drug stores do it? It gives 
a store a good name to have people find out that 
they can always get a bill changed there cheerfully, 
and it brings in many a customer who would other- 
wise go elsewhere. Of course it is sometimes a 
nuisance to change bills for people who never buy 
anything, but anyone who is accommodated con- 
tinually is sure to reciprocate in some way some 
time, even though the druggist himself does not 
know of it. The people we accommodate often do 
us a good deal of good outside by things they say 
that never reach our ears. And the contrary is also 
true. The people we refuse to accommodate injure 
us by their outside talk. 

Promptness is a cardinal virtue in a drug store. 

36 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

It should be conspicuous all through the store's 
work in buying and selling and in everything else. 
The workers should be on hand promptly when 
they are scheduled. They should be prompt in 
attending to customers and in doing the store work. 
Procrastination is more than the thief of time ; it is 
the thief of dollars and many of them. Bills should 
be paid as well as collected promptly. Prescriptions 
should be ready when promised. Special orders 
should be sent without delay, even telegraphed if 
necessary, in order to have the goods at the time 
desired. The man who cannot be prompt cannot 
run a drug store right. 

Every bill that carries a discount should be dis- 
counted even if it is necessary to borrow the money 
to do it. Discounting bill helps the dealer's repu- 
tation with his wholesaler, to say nothing of its 
helping his bank account. 

Though the store is not a department store, if it 
is large enough for different lines of goods to be 
kept in different places, it is large enough so that 
the separate departments ought to be indicated by 
plain signs hung up over the counters. These serve 
the purpose of showing people where they can find 
the goods they are after without the necessity of 
asking questions unnecessarily and sometimes in 
embarassment, and also they serve to remind people 
of lines they may need and might have forgotten, 
or to show them that the store carries the goods — 
a fact which the customer may not have known. 

The use of show cards and signs inside is of value 

37 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

in direct proportion to the quality and plainness of 
the signs. Signs are clerks that draw no salaries, 
but make sales just the same. 

The well managed store should seek to gain a 
reputation for generosity. Nobody likes to trade in 
a stingy store, and stores get that reputation or the 
reverse, just as individuals do, and such a reputation 
sticks and does harm or good for a long time. A 
reputation for stinginess may be acquired merely 
by carelessness in adjusting a claim or two with 
talkative customers who take pains to spread their 
opinions broadcast. 

Generosity in store management, like the same 
quality anywhere, costs something, but it is worth 
something. It gets the store liked and makes people 
willing to trade there. 

In the matter of vacation allowances to its help 
the store can well afford to be generous too. Every 
man in the store needs an annual vacation, with 
complete freedom from store surroundings. The 
proprietor needs it most of all. The man comes 
back ready to do better work and ready to take up 
the business of the store with some real interest. 
Any store worker deprived of a vacation will cost 
the store the price of his vacation easily enough in 
the course of the year. 



38 



CHAPTER V 
Does Early Closing Pay? 

Drug stores keep open longer hours than other 
stores. They are expected to do so. In the cities 
there is no thought of their reducing the open 
hours to any great extent. Perhaps the public 
would object if they did. 

But in the average town and in the smaller vil- 
lages there is a more or less constant agitation in 
favor of the earlier closing of all stores, including 
the drug stores. The commercial club or the cham- 
ber of commerce may have taken up the matter 
and petitions are sometimes circulated. 

There is more jealousy among the various stores 
in the smaller town, and the grocer who has some 
cigar trade hates to close up evenings and leave the 
drug store open and likely to get some of his cigar 
customers away from him. 

The jeweler sees fountain-pen trade that he wants, 
going to the druggist if the latter keeps open eve- 
nings and he does not. The cigar store will not 
close up and leave the drug store open. The result 
of all this is that the business men in all lines may 
bring pressure to bear upon the druggist, claiming 
that he is the obstacle standing in the way of early 
closing all along the line. 

The druggist's clerks think they are having it a 
good deal harder than clerks in adjoining stores 
because they have to work longer hours. The poor 
druggist gets it from all sides. 

39 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Two things the druggist must do in connection 
with the early closing agitation. He must find out 
whether it pays him to keep open, and he must jus- 
tify himself before the public for doing so if there 
is a general idea that he is blocking the wheels of 
progress by refusing to close early. 

One thing the druggist must take into considera- 
tion : he can be sure of losing some business. For 
example, his window displays may create sales on 
candy or cigars or magazines for use that evening, 
and if the sale is not made then the need has passed 
the next day. The evening has taken care of itself 
without those aids. Or, again, the man who has a 
little headache in the evening may drop in and get 
something for it if the store is open, whereas if it is 
closed he may get over it without medicine. 

We all make many purchases because of the 
opportunity and because display causes us to step 
in and buy. The things we put off buying till 
tomorrow we often fail to buy. In many drug stores 
the peak of the day's business is in the evening. 
A druggist told me the other day of an evening 
when all the stores in town had agreed to close up 
for some special event. He tried to close at 7 
o'clock as he had agreed, but the store was full of 
customers and it was 8 o'clock before he had a 
chance to lock the door. To satisfy his curiosity 
he made some figures and found that he had taken 
in during that hour as much as he had taken in all 
the rest of the day. 

For a time I watched in my own store the trend 

40 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

of trade and found that throughout a considerable 
part of the year the evening sales were at least a 
third of the total sales for the day. I think it can 
easily be proved that it pays almost any druggist to 
keep open evenings on the basis of the business he 
would otherwise lose. 

In some communities there is a rule for closing 
early three nights in the week. When this plan is 
followed it is usually found that it kills the other 
nights, except perhaps Saturday night. People 
cannot remember which are the closed and which 
the open nights, and they cease buying evenings. 
They get along without. 

Obviously it is better business for the druggist 
to keep open evenings as late as he finds business 
comes in in profitable quantity, considered on the 
average. But it is equally obvious that there should 
be an effort made to lessen the working hours of 
the force when they are long and wearying. A little 
adjustment of the schedule so that no more help 
will be retained at night than is necessary will help 
matters. There can be alternation of the evening 
and of the earlier morning work so that the net 
result will be less time on duty for all, though 
accompanied by longer hours of open store. 

When an effort is being made to arrange an early 
closing schedule and there is a tendency to blame 
the druggist for blocking it, the druggist may 
advantageously take some advertising space to pre- 
sent his side of the matter. The public likes to 
have drug stores open as a measure of safety and 

41 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

convenience. They will even look upon the drug- 
gist as public spirited because he declines to close 
up. 

Early closing by any line of stores plays into the 
hands of the little fellows who refuse to close and 
who are not regarded as being of enough importance 
to be considered seriously. Many a young man 
starting in business with a small store and little 
money has gradually built up a trade by accommo- 
dating people when his bigger competitors were 
closed up tight. 

Keeping open as long as there is a profitable 
trade coming in means more net return, because it 
means no more overhead expense. You can't take 
in any money with the door locked. 

Arrange your plans so that you and the force 
will work less hours, but do it by dividing the 
responsibility and shifting the hours of work, rather 
than by locking the door. 



42 



CHAPTER VI 

Making Children Like Your Store 

The old saying is that " As the twig is bent, so 
the tree inclines/ ' and it is sound logic. The way 
a child is bent, mentally, morally or physically, that 
way the child is going to go. And the way a child 
starts in the matter of shopping, that way that child 
is pretty likely to continue. 

So, if you are going to remain in the drug busi- 
ness in your present location or near it for any great 
length of time, see that you get the children inclined 
your way. Unless you get them to like you while 
they are young, you will not easily get their business 
when they become real customers. 

A fly-by-night dealer may get on without cultivat- 
ing the children's friendship, but we are not inter- 
ested in that kind of business men, and anyway there 
are not many of them in the drug trade. 

It is not all of the value of getting the children 
on your side that they may be your customers when 
they grow up. Children are often actual customers 
of the store while they are still children, and they 
always exert a real influence over their parents, 
bringing them to you if the store is a good children's 
store. 

Children are mighty observant. They notice how 
their parents are treated and they notice how they 
themselves are treated. If you treat a little girl's 
mother politely and wrap up her parcel and hand it 
to her and bid her good afternoon, and then when 

43 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

the little girl is sent by herself and gets the carton 
of something or other handed to her without a 
wrapper, or more likely thrown down on the 
counter, while the money is picked up and you 
look idly out of the window and let the youngster 
go away without a word of thanks or a " come again/* 
don't think the child will not notice the difference. 
Children's eyes are wide open all the while they are 
in your store. 

A child may realize that because she is a child, 
she does not receive a grown-up's treatment and 
that is where you have a chance to get in right with 
her. You can treat her more like a grown-up and 
instead of merely not getting any negative effect, 
you can get positive effect. You can make the child 
customer feel friendly instead of merely avoiding 
offending her. 

Don't ignore the child coming in with a parent. 
To be polite to that child, pleases the child and that 
pays, even if the child is fresh and obstreperous. 
And when you are polite to the child, when you 
give it notice, you please the parent — and that pays 
too. I don't care who the parent is, it is not in 
human nature to fail to feel pleased with attention 
to one's children in a store — or out of it. 

We laugh a good deal at the old-fashioned 
methods, as we are pleased to term them, of the 
druggists and others in business twenty years ago 
or more, but there was an attention to details in 
that day that is neglected now. In those days a 
druggist had time to look at a child. He had time 

44 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

to take a personal attitude with every youngster who 
came in. And he was not afraid to hand out a stick 
of candy for fear of violating the Interstate Com- 
merce Act by making free goods an act of unfair 
competition. 

Our fathers and our grandfathers gave more of 
the personal touch to their relations with customers. 
Perhaps they had more time and made larger profits 
and competition was less keen. Perhaps they were 
less efficient and made money by it, or in spite of it. 

Anyway, druggists used to give the children better 
individual attention and did more to establish a per- 
sonal relationship with them. But you can do more 
of this right now and you can see that your clerks 
do it. It may lose you a little immediate business, 
but it will build up a future trade that no one can 
get away from you. You may, by talking longer 
with a child, be deprived of enough time to sell an 
adult some extras, but if you will get your store the 
reputation of being friendly to children and patient 
with them, as if you really liked them, you will 
occupy a unique and well-fortified position in the 
hearts and minds of both children and parents . Your 
store will profit by the work you do along that line. 

You sell some lines of goods that are bought by 
children, that are favored by them. About these, 
the children are just as adults are about the things 
they buy. They are influenced by advertising and 
display. When you get up a window display of any- 
thing adapted to children, give it a touch that will 
interest the children. 

45 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Take tooth brushes, for example. You know that 
almost every parent in town will thank you if you 
help interest the children in brushing their teeth. 
Why not do it and get them lined up on your side ? 

Take some crepe paper decorated with a design 
adapted to interesting the boys and girls, a Mother 
Goose pattern or something else suitable. Using 
this, make a proper setting for your display. Then 
arrange children's tooth brushes and dentifrices so 
they will interest children. Make one of those big 
tooth brushes that you have seen made with a long, 
properly-shaped board made into the handle and the 
children's brushes stuck in as " bristles." This in 
itself will be the kind of a freak thing that children 
will stop to look at. 

Then build out of the tooth-paste cartons some 
kind of a cardboard house. You might make a 
recognizable reproduction of the school house. Use 
cards to indicate the flavors of the tooth pastes. 
"Tastes like wintergreen" may describe one kind, 
and that will mean something to the youngster who 
spells it out, when "Antiseptic, non-irritant " would 
not mean a thing. The point of contact is going to 
be along the line of the child's likes rather than its 
actual needs. 

Then announce that you are going to give a kite 
to every child of eight to twelve years of age who 
buys a brush and dentifrice and comes back in a 
month and brings a card signed and stating that the 
brush has been used every day for the month. Give 
out the cards with the brushes. Put some of the 

46 



Getting More Dgug Store Business 

cards in the window along with the kites and the 
dentifrice, etc., and a big card explaining the plan. 
You will find that many of the parents will fall in 
heartily with your scheme and as a matter of fact, 
you will be the means of starting many youngsters 
along the right road to oral hygiene, though they 
wouldn't recognize it by that name. 

Then take the matter of candy for children. Pick 
out a special package suited to the use of the young- 
sters and make a big display of it inside the store with 
a card on it : u Fine, Pure Candy for Children," and 
with another card appealing to the children more 
directly : " Not to be opened till you get home — 
The Kind Children like." This is an appeal to the 
interest of the kiddies with a proviso that will suit 
the parents who are willing enough to buy proper 
candy but don't want a child tagging along, getting 
all stuck up with it. So when you sell that candy 
with the understanding that it is not to be opened 
until taken home, you play into parents' hands. 

Then the soda fountain has its appeal to the 
children and you want the business they can bring 
to you. You should have small tables and seats, or 
one at least, that will fit the children, or at least a 
few chairs that are high enough so the children will 
be able to eat or drink through a straw from the top 
of the table without having to take the glass in their 
laps. How would you enjoy drinking soda from a 
glass you had to set on something so high that you 
could not get your head high enough to put your 
mouth over the end of the straw ? Of course you 

47 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

would take the glass in your hands, and then of 
course you would spill some of the contents. 

Get the table low enough or the chair high enough. 
It doesn't matter how you do it, but make it at least 
as easy for the child as for the adult to drink with- 
out making a muss. 

And the kind of ice cream spoons you use are not 
always adapted to being eaten with as a child eats 
except with unusual chances of spilling. Have some 
regular teaspoons that a child knows how to use, 
short handled and larger than these long handled 
freaks made for tall soda glasses and experienced 
feeders, not for beginners. 

When you make ice cream and soda eating and 
drinking easy for the children, you increase their 
enjoyment and make them want to come again, and 
you make their parents more willing to bring them 
or to send them. That is going to count a good 
deal for the benefit of your store. 

Another phase of the children's trade that is quite 
important, especially in the drug store, is the busi- 
ness you do with them when they are sent by older 
people for various purchases. 

At such times you have a chance to treat young- 
sters in such a way that they will be pleased and 
like the store, and you may be sure they will go 
home and tell their parents how they were treated. 
In many instances they will be actually asked what 
the druggist said and did. In every case where they 
do not get the right kind of treatment, they are 
going to tell about it. 

48 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

If you build up for your store a reputation for 
treating children well when they come alone, they 
will be sent to you oftener. Why not advertise the 
fact that you give children by themselves special 
attention, that anyone may send the children to you 
on errands with the full assurance that they will 
receive perfectly fair treatment and no advantage of 
the fact that they are inexperienced. Then treat 
them so well that they will want to come shopping 
at your store by themselves. 

Many a time a family gets along without something 
that would be useful in an emergency because they 
do not think they can send the child after it. Urge 
people to send boys and girls with written orders, 
and then take all possible pains in filling out those 
orders just as the sender wanted them. 

Treating the children right, you see, is of great 
importance and it has its reward both now and in 
the future. Make your store the one store in your 
town or in your neighborhood where the children 
are treated right and you will be able to increase 
your trade just by that means. 

The school trade, the business of the pupils of 
the various schools within trading radius of a drug 
store, is well worth getting. Most druggists, espe- 
cially in small towns, carry a line of school stationery. 
Neighborhood druggists in the large cities also find 
it a profitable line. The stationery itself pays a 
good rate of profit and it affords a means of bring- 
ing in a good many people who buy other things. 

It is probably fair to say that even though school 

49 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

stationery and some other lines popular with children, 
paid no net profit of their own, still it would be good 
business for the store to carry them because of the 
other trade they produce, and because it is well 
worth while to get the youngest folks into the habit 
of coming to the store. 

If you can get school children coming to your 
store for things they want in the way of stationery 
and sweets, they will become familiar with your 
place and they will feel at home there. 

How are you going to get the school children's 
trade? By going after it, of course. If you just 
trust to its coming to you voluntarily, you may get 
some of it, but it will be a small proportion because 
somebody else will be trying hard to gobble up the 
lion's share. You should deliberately set about 
popularizing your store with the pupils of the schools. 

Put your school stationery, if possible, on a table 
low enough for the smaller children to see what you 
have. Keep at least some variety of stock there 
where the children can pick out what they want 
without assistance. They will soon learn that they 
can select a writing tablet or a pencil themselves 
and hand you the money when you are busy with 
other customers. Put plain prices on each item 
and encourage the self-serving idea, even though 
you do know that now and then you lose a little 
something through theft. 

If you are right on a street where most of the 
pupils must pass your store going to and from school, 
make up frequent and attractive displays of school 

SO 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

goods. Feature the line even a little out of pro- 
portion to its actual net value to you. You are 
looking farther ahead with these goods than merely 
to the immediate profit. You are looking for the 
results of getting the school age buyers into the 
habit of patronizing your store. 

Make up window displays that will have in them 
something to attract the interest of the school boys 
and girls. Show collections of photographs of movie 
stars, or of baseball players and other athletes. 
Have ingenious moving figures and other devices of 
a mechanical nature. Try carrying some of the 
most popular things in sporting goods ; feature occa- 
sional bargain lots of popular music, novelty school 
caps, school banners and pennants. Keep some- 
thing new of interest in the window all the time. 
You will know what are the interests of the school 
crowd. Don't let your windows become dull and 
uninteresting. Your windows are the best means 
of alluring the young folks and drawing them into 
spending money your way. 

If you are not right on the street leading to the 
school, perhaps a little off on a side street, you will 
have to exert yourself more in other directions to 
bring in that trade. Try to get a big sign that will 
be noticeable from the corner of the street that leads 
to the school. Crowd the presence of your store 
upon people's attention that far away. Seek busi- 
ness by soliciting it in every possible way. Dis- 
tribute circulars to the children as they leave school, 
calling attention to special values in school station- 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ery. Get a mailing list of the pupils, classified so 
you can reach such grades or ages as you wish. 
Send them catchy advertisements which will tend 
to draw them to your store, even though it is a little 
out of the way. 

Dig up all the school novelties you can find in the 
trade, and feature something new and different con- 
stantly at an attractive price. Get novelty pencils 
and note books, made up with special covers with 
pictures of the school or some of its people. When 
you succeed in getting something different and 
special that makes a hit, every child in school will 
want it. 

Don't be satisfied with the stereotyped so-called 
novelties that every dealer can get. Devise novel- 
ties for yourself. Think up ways in which you can 
capitalize a special pencil with some local name on 
t, or a tablet with a special cover. Covers rather 
than contents sell the cheaper tablets . Figure on 
these things a long way ahead and get them made 
up for your use. Sell them at the prices that will 
bring the widest sale rather than the largest imme- 
diate profit. Keep some one novelty going all the 
while, something to attract the pupils. They will 
buy enough other things from you to make the 
novelty profitable indirectly. 

There are many ways in which you can bring the 
children into your store for something free and, 
though this may seem a nuisance to you, you may 
be sure that the druggist who keeps a string of 
children coming to his store for a free blotter or a 

52 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

post card of the school, or a ruler, or what not, is 
the druggist who is going to end by getting the bulk 
of their trade. 

You can make your store so interesting and 
attractive to children that they will popularize it 
among themselves, even if it is some distance out 
of their way. 



53 



CHAPTER VII 

Getting the Farmers' Trade 

The farmers are an important class of customers 
and their trade is as important as that of any class. 
The farmer is intelligent and informed about busi- 
ness methods. He knows what is what when it 
comes to the quality of the goods. He is no longer 
an easy mark for anything one wants to sell. The 
catalogue houses are constantly sending the farmer 
literature, calling his attention to goods in your line. 

While the farmer lives in the country, he is close 
to civilization and in a large proportion of cases gets 
his daily newspaper the same as we do. He is no 
longer a " Rube," but has become a business man. 

One of the best ways to hold the trade of the 
farmer is to get personally acquainted with him. 
When you know a farmer and are friendly with him, 
you can count on getting his trade. Of all classes 
of customers, he is the most interested in buying 
from someone with whom he is acquainted. Some 
of us may be just as ready to buy of a stranger as 
of a friend, but it is not so with the farmer. He 
likes to go to the drug store where he finds some- 
one he knows. 

This being the case, it ought to be obvious that 
one of the best things you can do to hold this trade 
is to get acquainted with as many farmers as possi- 
ble, and get as many as you can of them coming to 
your store on that account. 

Let the farmers make your store their headquar- 

54 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ters, leaving their parcels there until they drive 
along to go home. Let them get warm there in 
winter and cool in summer. Set up the cigars occa- 
sionally. They appreciate little favors more than 
any other class. If you want things in their line, 
farm products, patronize them occasionally instead 
of the grocer. Turn about is fair play. 

Getting acquainted with the farmer when he 
comes to town is all right. Developing a friendship 
with him when he comes into the store is good. 
But better than these — a way that creates more 
interest on his part — is the visiting of him on his 
farm. If you will use your dull days and half days 
in trips out among the farmers, stopping and looking 
over their barns and dairies, inspecting their wheat 
fields and their stock, shaking hands with their 
working force and going into the house and getting 
acquainted with the women folks, too ; staying to 
dinner or supper, if you are asked ; using practical 
political methods — if you will adopt some such 
methods and practice them whenever you can, you 
will soon have those farmers coming to your store, 
and, further than that, you will develop some mighty 
pleasant acquaintances and get more enjoyment out 
of life. 

By taking along a clerk at such times you will 
increase the interest of the farmer in your business, 
because he will have two strings drawing him that 
way instead of one, and that clerk will develop more 
interest in the personality of the customers. 

Of course, no harm will be done by having along 

55 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

a good supply of cigars and candy, but such a trip 
is not the time to talk store business. Forget your 
own interests and get enthusiastic over those of the 
men you visit. If you are asked about anything 
connected with the store, that is different, when 
you have an opportunity. 

The farmers are particularly sensitive to any 
appearance indicating that the druggist feels in any 
way above them. You have to meet the farmer on 
an equal footing if you are going to hold him. He 
will not patronize a store where he thinks they are 
willing to take his money, but feel a little bit above 
him. As a matter of fact, there is just as much 
reason for the farmer feeling above a druggist as 
for the reverse. A snob is out of place in either 
class. 

When a farmer walks into your store, if anyone 
who sees him knows him by name — no matter if 
that one is busy — he should get a chance to call 
the farmer's name and greet him, and instead of 
merely passing him on to another clerk in an anony- 
mous way, introduce him to another, thus making a 
personal matter of it and extending that farmer's 
acquaintance in your store and making the personal 
element count farther. 

If you cannot get out to see the farmers, you can 
send them advertising, but you can go farther and 
write them personal letters that will help the ac- 
quaintanceship between you. You can issue a little 
store paper, filled half with advertisements and half 
reading matter, giving your farmer patrons, to whom 

56 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

the paper is mailed, the opportunity to advertise 
therein free any " Wants' 5 and " For Sale" items 
they will send in or bring in. Thus you are doing 
something for the farmer that is a service he will 
appreciate. 

I believe it will pay you to subscribe for two or 
three farm papers and read them sufficiently to be 
intelligent to a certain degree upon some subjects 
the farmer knows about. That will give you and 
him a common ground in conversation and you will 
both act more naturally. 

Another thing that will help will be to send for 
some of the more important U.S. Government Bul- 
letins covering subjects of interest to the farmers in 
your locality. If you know about these and have a 
list of them in your pocket, you will be in a position 
to give the farmer a tip now and then as to where 
he can find out what he wants to know about con- 
trolling some insect pest or blight. Then, too, you 
will find that you can develop a sale on some of 
your drugs through this very means. 

There are many things in the way of drugs that 
are constantly being recommended by the farm 
journals for use in exterminating this or that sort 
of worm, bug, or beetle, or for use in some sort of 
animal disease that is going the rounds among pigs, 
sheep, or cattle, like the measles running through a 
district school. If you can't read a farm paper and 
keep posted on such things, ask some farmer whom 
you know pretty well. He '11 give you some good 
tips. 

57 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

The farmers use more things in the way of what 
we call household drugs than almost any other class 
of trade. Advertising that quotes prices on this 
sort of thing will be read by them carefully. Some- 
thing in the way of a mailing card with a catchy 
heading and a bunch of low prices on goods like 
borax, ammonia, witch hazel, flavoring extracts, 
soaps, " salts' ' for man and beast, quinine pills, etc., 
etc., picking out for each lot of cards a group of 
seasonable goods, will bring business. Mailing cards 
sent to people in town will probably be left on the 
floor of the postoffice, but the farmer will take them 
home and read them. 

In the winter there is a steady demand for stock 
food, which, though sold by feed stores and all sorts 
of general stores, is a thing that druggists also can 
and do sell a great deal of. Get a good line that is 
well advertised in the farm journals and push it. It 
does not interfere with any other line of goods you 
handle, and for all you sell you will be just so much 
ahead. Stock food has to a great extent displaced 
the old-fashioned condition powders. It sells for 
cattle until they get out into the pasture, and it 
sells at all times for horses and other confined ani- 
mals. Most makers of stock food have a line of 
veterinary remedies as well which are good sellers. 
You will find that it will pay to keep them in stock 
and to let the farmers know that you have them. 

If you have the farmer in mind in writing your 
advertisements of goods you expect him to buy, 
you will come nearer writing something he will 

58 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

read than if you write with your own point of view 
uppermost. You will not have to write "down to " 
the farmer, but his point of view is different. 

The farmer often buys in larger quantities than 
the townspeople. His trade is valuable on this 
account. There was a day when he might drive up 
and ask for the proprietor and demand the best 
spot cash price on flaxseed meal in quantity. When 
the price was quoted, he would think it over, and 
say: "Well, I came down light today, and I can't 
carry that much, but you can weigh me out a pound 
and I'll get some more next time." The farmer 
does not have to do that today. He has the money 
to get what he wants and pay for it, but, neverthe- 
less, he is probably a closer buyer as to price than 
most classes of people. It is probably a good thing 
that he is. Most people are not careful enough, but 
it is this characteristic that makes it necessary to 
see that the catalogue houses don't get ahead of us 
too far in their price concessions — and apparent 
concessions. 

We can take a lesson from the mail order houses 
in the matter of persistence in asking the farmers 
for their trade. They not only go after the busi- 
ness ; they keep after it. They send their big cata- 
logue, and then they send along circulars and folders 
and special catalogues, and they keep that farmer 
reminded of their existence, and they keep asking 
him to buy from them until he just naturally does 
if without any thought of whether it is a good thing 
to do or not. Why can't we ask the farmer for his 

59 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

business as often and as intelligently as the cata- 
logue house? We certainly can ask him with a 
good deal more personal interest, and we have infi- 
nitely more reasons to give for his trading with us 
than has the mail order man. 

The idea of a druggist complaining about the loss 
of trade to a mail order house when he is not doing 
anything himself to offset the monthly, or, perhaps, 
almost weekly requests they send to his trade, seems 
to me rather childish. 

The way to get business is to go after it. The 
way to make sure of the mail order man getting it 
is to leave it to him to take. 

In a way the druggist may have the big catalogue 
to thank for some things. The farmer's wife, study- 
ing the S., R. & Co. book, sees in there many items 
in your line she would like to have which she did 
not know you keep, because you have never gone 
to the farmers' wives with a little booklet calling 
their attention to articles for comfort and conven- 
ience which they ought to know about. I have no 
doubt that many a call for toilet articles and spec- 
ialties in the drug store is due to the farmer folks 
having read about them in the mail order catalogue 
and tried the home store before sending away for 
them. 

You have countless opportunities to get advertis- 
ing matter about new goods into the farmer's family 
with little or no expense. The manufacturers will 
supply you with samples and booklets, and these 
may be inserted in parcels, put into the farmers' 

60 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

wagons and automobiles in the street, without cost 
for distribution. In this way you familiarize the 
people with things they did not know about, and 
you get the first chance at their business, instead of 
leaving it for them to learn about the goods first in 
a catalogue, thus thinking that you are behind the 
times. 

An almanac is a piece of advertising literature 
that the farming class value highly, and any sort of 
a booklet that you may get up with a little useful 
information in it, or a few pictures or jokes, will not 
be thrown away unread. Calendars are valued more 
highly in such cases, and are necessary to keep the 
good-will of your customers. 

A mailing list of the farmers who do or who can 
trade in your town is invaluable. Keep it up to date 
and use it often. A first-class way to reach them 
with prices is to typewrite a letter, quoting prices 
on the goods that are especially timely, and dupli- 
cate it on a mimeograph or something of that kind. 
If you have the apparatus (and duplicators are 
cheap), this is a form of advertising that will not 
cost much more than the postage. A pen-written 
letter can be duplicated in the same way, and then 
every letter made personal by an individual heading. 

You must, of course, put yourself out to be polite 
to the wife and children of the farmer, because he 
and they are more sensitive than the townspeople 
and are inclined to be watching for slights. Make 
the farmers' children want to come to your store 
and make them feel at home there, and you will 

61 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

have done one of the best things you could do in 
developing an interest in your place of business 
among the out-of-town class. 

You ought to have copies of the latest mail order 
catalogues in your store in order to know what those 
competitors are offering your trade, and if you can 
meet the prices in them, you ought to give publicity 
to the fact. If you can offer as good a proposition 
as the Larkin outfit, let the public know about 
it, and tell the farmers that you will fill soap club 
orders and give a premium equal to that of the mail 
order house. Study the propositions of everybody 
who is trying to get orders from your customers by 
mail and beat them at their own game, if you can. 
If you cannot do that, distract people's attention 
from other folks' game by making them think about 
some plan of your own. 

The drug store has a chance to emphasize the 
importance of buying in person and seeing that the 
goods are properly handled, properly cared for in 
stock and that the best for the purpose is selected. 
In advertising to compete with the mail order house, 
create a definite impression as far as you can in favor 
of goods from a properly accredited pharmacy, under 
the oversight of a licensed pharmacist, rather than 
from a house which merely handles everything of 
that sort like all other lines, taking the same care 
of druggists' sundries that is taken of plough shoes 
and strap hinges. 

The professional standing and professional knowl- 
edge of the druggist is something the mail order 

62 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

house does not duplicate, and what harm is there in 
calling attenting to this fact ? Emphasize the fact 
that in your store the goods are looked after with a 
view to keeping them free from contamination, and 
that instead of being packed and shipped by cheap 
help with no professional interest in the welfare of 
the user, they are handled by careful druggists and 
by clerks trained to the druggists' point of view. 

It is worth while to advertise to the farmers the 
fact that you are qualified to put up all kinds of vet- 
erinary receipts in the right way and at right prices. 

The farmers' wives are great dye users. They do 
their dyeing mostly in the spring and fall, and adver- 
tising that calls their attention to that sort of thing 
will pay well. Have all the package dyes that are 
in demand and be ready to put up the coloring 
receipts of the old-fashioned kind. Have a book of 
those receipts handy yourself and encourage people 
to use that kind. It makes more work, but it pays, 
a good deal better. 

Be ready for the time when orchards are to be 
sprayed to protect the blossoms against the insects. 
Blue vitrol is much used for that. Advertise such 
goods at low prices in quantity and get the big 
sales. They will be more profitable than the small 
lots that pay a larger percentage. 

Disinfectants for use in the stables, etc., are always 
sellers, and the cheapest generally sells best and 
pays best. Don't recommend a worthless article. 

Paris green and other potato bug poisons are 
money makers. Have all the kinds there is a sale 

63 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

for, and have them when the first call comes. Be 
ready early with a stock of hellebore and insect 
powder, and never run out. 

A good line of dog medicines will sell to the 
farmers. They will buy stuff to make hens lay. A 
good strong horse liniment is a thing worth pushing 
if it is one that you know is all right. 

Farmers are good patent medicine buyers. If 
there is any time when a man is justified in recom- 
mending his own preparations in preference to those 
of the proprietary maker (and some would have us 
believe there is not), it is when the country people 
come a-purchasing and give you a good loophole for 
a little talk about your own non-secret line. They 
are people who trust in your knowledge of medi- 
cines and are ready to take your suggestion that 
you can save them some money on a remedy that 
you can guarantee. I believe in treating the pro- 
prietary men fairly, especially if they are the ones 
that treat the druggist fairly, but I believe likewise 
that in business it is a case of every man for himself. 

It is easier now to sell a gold brick to a man who 
has spent his life in a city than to a country bred 
person. The farmers know what they are about. 
They are particularly intelligent as a class. They 
are good buyers, and they stick well to one store 
when they have found the one that suits them. 
Don't neglect your town trade, of course, but bear 
on hard all the while on the farmers. They are the 
backbone of the nation's commerce and you can 
make them the backbone of yours. 

64 



CHAPTER VIII 
Preparing For Spring Trade 

This is a good chapter to read late in the winter 
when you begin to look ahead to the coming of 
spring, when you can see that the sun is beginning 
to shine on both sides of the fence, and the seed 
catalogues are clogging up the mails. 

You should be getting ready to take advantage 
of every opportunity that the coming of spring offers. 
There will be more business in many lines and the 
druggists who are ready will be the ones to profit 
by it. What will you do to make your business 
boom? Let me suggest some of the things you 
can do. 

How about your window displays ? Are they 
going to be any better, any more interesting and 
alluring than they were a year ago ? Have you im- 
proved any in window dressing in a year ? Can you 
improve the lighting of your windows ? Have you 
bettered your window trimming equipment any in a 
year ? Are you any better at making window sign 
cards ? It will pay you to see what you can get in 
the way of window fixtures that will make it easier 
to get up good displays and make them up in less 
time than it takes to arrange them without any but 
home-made apparatus. Spend a few dollars for win- 
dow display helps. Get better brushes too for mak- 
ing signs. See what the electric light people can 
offer in the way of better lights. Write to the manu- 
facturers of the lines you sell and ask them what 

65 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

they can send you to help in making window dis- 
plays of their goods. Get all the help you can in 
this important part of your work, and get it as soon 
as you can. You will find your drug journals help- 
ful in suggestions in both reading and advertising 
pages. But all the suggestions and ideas and offers 
of helps free or for sale will not help if you do not 
heed them. 

It is important that you keep your eyes open for 
new goods and new lines that are coming into popu- 
larity. If you think to hold the patronage of just 
your old customers with nothing more than the 
same old seasonable goods you offered them last 
spring and the spring before, you are fooling your- 
self. New things are constantly being put on the 
market and being advertised to the general public. 
New spring remedies, new sundries, new side lines, 
new soaps, dentifrices, toilet specialties of all kinds. 
If you try to operate on the basis that what was 
good enough for your trade last year will be good 
enough this year, your logic may be sound enough, 
but it will not keep the public from wanting the new 
things they learn about through magazine advertis- 
ing or through your competitors 1 displays. 

Keep your stock interesting by the addition of 
new items. Buy as little as you like of the new 
things. Be cautious, according to your best judg- 
ment, but don't be a back number and carry only 
the same old lines from year to year. 

The interspersing of novelties, even if some of 
them are freaks, will interest people in your store . 

66 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Your customers will buy about the same type of 
tooth brushes year after year and new, freakish 
styles may not make good, but for all that, it will 
pay you to show the freaks, just to call attention to 
your tooth brush stock as a whole, and to show that 
you are up to date. Don't let the public get the 
idea that other druggists introduce new things while 
you are in a rut as far as stock goes. 

Easter is an opportunity for featuring some of 
your goods. Perfumes may well be given a strong 
Easter boost. If you want to get the perfume busi- 
ness and keep it, you certainly need to keep informed 
about what is new along that line. If you are the 
type of druggist who is still sticking to white rose, 
jockey club and violet, and paying no attention to 
newer odors or to imported perfumes, you will not 
get the desirable trade in that line. Stock some 
of the popular French perfumes and stock the new 
and fashionable American goods. You may not 
sell much of the high-priced French stuff, but its 
presence in your perfume case helps to attract the 
women. You will, naturally, keep white rose as long 
as anybody wants to buy it, but if you are after 
trade, you will make it obvious that your perfume 
stock is up to date. 

It is the same in all toilet articles. Women are 
always looking for the new thing. They may come 
back to an old favorite after trying the new goods, 
or they may be satisfied after having merely looked 
at the new things. But unless you have what is 
new, they are going to shop around at other stores 

6 7 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

until they find it, whether they buy or not. You 
don't want your customers going to other drug 
stores for goods you do not have. 

You may be able to arouse a new interest in your 
toilet goods simply by placing them in a different 
show case or by moving the old show case to a dif- 
ferent position. If you have not this opportunity, 
spend money enough to get a new and suitable case 
that will enable you to feature the goods to better 
advantage, attracting more attention to them. 

The purchase of a new show case or two may be 
the best investment you can make. You certainly 
ought to keep buying such display equipment until 
you have enough of the best to show your stock. 
Don't put off buying cases until you can buy enough 
for a whole new equipment. Buy as you can spare 
the money. Each case, as you add it, will help 
make money to buy another, and you can duplicate 
standard cases from the same maker if you like. 

Are you ready and have you the stock ordered to 
enable you to make a strong appeal for trade on the 
lines that have a special spring appeal ? 

How about sponges and chamois skins? You 
ought to be well filled up on those goods. You can 
buy chamois skins by the kip and sponges by the 
bale at this time of the year with the certainty of 
the best selling season of the year on .those things 
right ahead, though in the fall you might find it 
foolish in your case, to buy in such quantities. 

The automobile season is opening and there is no 
reason why you should let the garages and accessory 

68 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

dealers get away from you the motorists' business 
on sponges and chamois skins. You might well go 
after some of their business by stocking polishes 
and featuring those and some other things for auto- 
mobile use. 

A display in the window, showing a large quantity 
of sponges, with a sign card, a This is the Place to 
Buy Sponges," will influence observers to believe in 
the tradition that the druggist keeps the best sponge 
values. Advertise sponges and chamois skins and 
impress the public with the belief that the drug 
store can give them the best value in that line. 
Mail out a circular or form letter to motorists, sug- 
gesting that they get a new sponge and chamois for 
the opening season. Keep watch of those who buy 
new cars and drop them such a letter. 

Then, in the matter of moth preventives, this is 
the time to be thinking how to make your sales as 
large as possible. People are apt to buy such things 
where they happen to see them on sale. Housewives 
may get them at the grocer's or the department store 
If you advertise for that business first, particularly 
if you mail out a good advertisement, you are pretty 
sure to get the bulk of the business in that line. 
You certainly can get it by going after it. So stock 
up with enough of the goods to make it worth while 
to work hard to sell them. 

It is the same way with insecticides. The coming 
of the gardening season will bring a great demand 
for such things from some store. It may go to some 
other drug store or even to a hardware store if you 

69 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

are neglecting your opportunities. If you make no 
effort to get the business, you will have no just 
reason for complaint when you do not get it. Don't 
be finding fault with people for going to hardware 
stores and groceries for goods you think they ought 
to buy from you. You can get that business by 
going after it, and if the hardware man and the 
grocer are better business getters than you, they 
are entitled to the business. It is up to you to go 
after the business, not to sit and wait for it to come 
voluntarily. You can't wish business into your 
store. 

It is a good plan to inject all the newness you can 
into your store and its stock and methods for the 
coming of spring. It is the new thing that is going 
to interest people, and the new methods of adver- 
tising and display will attract attention when they 
might never turn their heads to look if you were 
merely following the old cut and dried plans of a 
year ago. Start something new in your store, put 
new life into your work, new activity into your ad- 
vertising and display. Add anything new you can 
afford in the way of equipment, and stock evqry live 
new item that will have an interest for your cus- 
tomers. You can sell a little of anything new that 
is worth stocking for its novelty sake. The spring 
business is good for these who go after it, especially 
for those who get an early start. 



70 



CHAPTER IX 

The Motorists' Business 

It is good sense for a druggist who wants to 
increase his business to get a complete mailing list 
of the automobile owners of his community and to 
go after their business, not as motorists, but as 
prospective purchasers of drug-store merchandise. 

Because all the people on this list have cars it is 
possible to use that fact as a means of developing 
interest in what the druggist wishes to say to them. 
He can appeal to them in ways that would not inter- 
est non-owners. Here is a letter, for example, that 
has a special automobile note : 

Dear Madam: — It is a great convenience to be able to 
use your automobile for shopping. It brings you right to 
the door of the store with no inconvenience, even in bad 
weather. 

We are particularly glad to have people shop with us by 
automobile, and you need feel no hesitancy at any time abou 
driving up in front of our store and waiting for us to come 
out and serve you in your car. 

It is our business to keep watch of the curb outside and 
know when a customer is waiting out there. If you drive 
up, you may be sure you will be seen and will be waited on 
just the instant there is a clerk available, usually without any 
delay. 

You do not inconvenience us by asking us to wait on you 
in your automobile. That is a part of our business. We 
are here to serve you in the way that pleases you best. 
Yours very truly, 

The Markland Drug Company. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

It will be objected to by some that this plan of 
encouraging people to shop from outside will reduce 
sales by preventing customers seeing and buying at 
sight some of the self -selling merchandise displayed 
inside. So far as that goes, it is true. But the 
waiting customer in the car has the window displays 
right at hand which offsets that loss to some extent. 
The clerk has an opportunity to suggest other pur- 
chases just as when inside, with perhaps an advan- 
tage in attention because he is pleasing the customer 
by coming out to the curb to do business. 

The big advantage of offering this kind of service, 
however, and taking pains to see that the service 
rendered is up to the promises made for it, lies in 
the fact that it brings much new trade to the store 
— trade that ordinarily would whiz by. On an auto- 
mobile mailing list of the kind mentioned will be 
many people who have found other druggist unwill- 
ing to go outdoors to get their trade, or who have 
found that they received no attention when they 
drove up in front. 

Automobile riders are usually not unreasonable 
in what they want. Those who want the dealer to 
wait on them at the curb have reasons for it. They 
may be accustomed to that kind of service and will- 
ing to pay for it. They may be semi-invalids who, 
if they find they can get personal service of the kind 
they want right in their car, will give a store a 
good part of their business. They may be people 
in a hurry who think to save time by snappy curb 
service. 

72 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

It is not difficult to arrange to have the curb 
watched for waiting cars. If the windows are not 
trimmed up so high that the curb cannot be seen 
from behind the counters within, the nearest unoc- 
cupied clerk can go out when a car hauls up in front. 
If all the clerks are occupied, perhaps there is one 
who has a customer who will excuse him for a 
moment willingly. At the worst, there is only a 
little delay before some one will be available to go 
out and take the order. 

Objections to this sort of thing are the objections 
of convenience and expediency. As a matter of 
fact, service of this kind will get business — and that 
is the object of most retailers. 

Sales of candy should be easily increased among 
motorists by the use of such a letter as the follow- 
ing, mailed at the proper seasons : 

Dear Madam: — Every motor trip is made more pleasant 
by the addition of a box of candy, and you usually do take 
along some candy or stop and get some on the way. 

Let us suggest that you swing around by our store the next 
time you go out and get one of our dollar boxes. This is a 
box in which all the price goes into a pound of as good 
mixed chocolates as can be made. No frills on the box. 
You don't care for a fancy box in the car. 

Delicious cream and nut centers in just the flavors every 
one likes. 

And if you want anything in nut bars, popular-priced 
packets of mints or salted nuts or chewing gum, we have 
them all and will be glad to bring out an assortment. 

Just ask to see our " Motor Tray " of candy. We have a 
tray of all the best packages from nickel packets up to our 
famous dollar box. We bring the tray out for your selection- 

73 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

When going motoring, this gives you quick and complete 
service. You get what you want without delay. 
Yours very truly, 

The Markland Drug Company. 

For stimulating fountain business a letter of this 
kind may be tried to advantage : 

Dear Madam : — There is no better ice cream in town than 
ours. A real cream ice cream, with the best of flavorings 
and the greatest care in making it delicious. 

Real fruit and real fruit juices for use in it and with it. 

Luscious fresh strawberries in season. 

Our chocolate ice cream has more of the real chocolate 
flavor than any other we know. 

When motoring, stop for a few minutes and enjoy a good 
ice cream refreshment at our fountain. 

We have plenty of small tables and seats for your con- 
venience. Or if you wish, we will serve you with what you 
want right in the car. 

Ice cream cones, of course. 

When you want ice cream at home, stop and take home a 
pint or a quart of whatever you want. 

We have bottled beverages on ice all the time and can 
supply you with those for home use. 

A very fine ginger ale at #2.60 a dozen and a rebate of 5 
cents each for bottles returned. 

How about bottled drinks for picnics or roadside lunches ? 
How about ice cream or other things for the same lunch? 
Let us supply your wants. 

Yours very truly, 

The Markland Drug Company. 

These letters suggest services that are to be ren- 
dered. That suggestion about a ready prepared tray 
of various popular candies to be taken out to the car 
saves the rather unsatisfactory method of carrying 

74 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

out a small assortment in the hands while trying to 
tell about what other things the store offers. To 
provide such an outfit it is necessary only to paint 
up a flat box, or a basket, and keep it filled with an 
assortment, each item having a price card on it. To 
some such a plan may savor too much of the train 
butcher's methods ; it may even appear undignified. 
But there is no money in being dignified and cus- 
tomers don't care anything about it either. 

In taking care of this out-in-the-car trade, the 
druggist should not appear hurried or act as if he 
were being imposed upon. Even the dealer who is 
not making a drive for this kind of business cannot 
afford to drive it away or to offend the people by 
giving them indifferent service. 

There are more or less items of stock that are 
directly of interest to the motorist as such. He 
needs sponges, chamois skins, a can of light oil like 
"3-in-i," distilled water, occasionally rubber hose 
and adhesive tape, and other things in the drug line. 
It will pay to go after his trade on these goods and 
sell him before he has bought elsewhere. In certain 
cases, because of location, or in order to hold trade, 
it will prove profitable to stock some accessories. 
The druggist who is himself a motorist will feel a 
greater interest in such things. 

Trade of this kind may be attracted by placing at 
the edge of the city on each much traveled road a 
large signboard which reads something like this : 



75 



Getting More Drug Store Business 



ROAD INFORMATION FREE. 

Brown's Drug Store, 
253 Broad St. 
(This Street). 

Maps, Blue Books, Hotel List. 



A sign like this, large enough so the tourist can- 
not miss it, and set so it can be easily read while 
going at 30 miles an hour, will bring more than 
enough people to pay for its installation. 

It will also pay in many instances to make the 
drug store headquarters for motor literature. A 
supply of maps and blue books will bring direct 
profits, while ability and willingness to impart infor- 
mation about routes and road conditions, hotels and 
garages, will, if properly advertised, bring many 
motorists to the store. A plan that is often worked 
to advantage is to have a small bulletin board on 
which are displayed daily bulletins as to the condition 
of the main automobile thoroughfares and notes of 
any changes in detours and construction work. 

Another plan that has been used is that of a little 
map showing the main roads into town and so 
marked as to indicate the location of the store issu- 
ing the map. This map can be printed on a folder 
with such advertising as the druggist wants to run, 
and the folders distributed gratis to motorists. 

Two druggists in neighboring towns might com- 
bine to make up a map showing the routes in the 
vicinity of the two places and the road from one 

76 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

store to the other. The distribution of these by 
both stores would help each greatly and would be of 
value in landing the tourist business, which would 
incline to] drop into both of the stores for road 
information as well as for drug store needs. 

Automobile owners are increasing in numbers 
daily, and the druggists who go after their trade in 
an aggessive way are the ones who are going to reap 
the greatest harvests. The returns are good from 
such effort and expense as may be put forth along 
this line. 



77 



CHAPTER X 
Selling Dental Supplies 

Every dentist is a steady buyer of many things 
the druggist could supply as well as the dental sup- 
ply house, and usually at as low a price, quality for 
quality. Of course it is easy for the dentist to give 
the dental house his order for alcohol, peroxide of 
hydrogen, absorbent cotton and a score of other 
items at the same time he orders his gold and his 
amalgam filling materials. But there is nothing to 
prevent the druggist making it just as easy to get 
these things from him. 

Business of this character is pretty likely to go 
to the man who goes after it. The dentist who has 
abundant good intentions with regard to patronizing 
home stores forgets them when the smooth traveling 
salesman from the dental supply house begins to 
talk. Or, if he does remember his local friends, he 
is apt to think that " It doesn't matter this time. 
This is such a small item I won't bother to go to 
the drug store for it. I'll just have it come along 
with the rest." 

Many pages of drug-trade journals have been 
given up to urging druggists to visit the physicians 
regularly and solicit their business, but there has 
not been enough mention of the dentists. This is 
probably due to the fact that it is not so many years 
ago that the dentist did not use anything the drug- 
gist had for sale. His equipment was mainly forceps 
and painful-looking little steel tools. 

78 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Now the dentist uses counter-irritants to stop 
inflammation in the root of the tooth, and he needs 
various combinations for this purpose of iodine, 
tincture of aconite, oil of cloves, etc. If he has 
occasion to inject a disinfectant into the root of 
a tooth he needs such things as carbolic acid or a 
diluted iodine tincture, or he may (though con- 
demned by the best dentists) use peroxide in that 
way. He uses chloroform to dry out cavities to be 
filled. He uses alcohol in his lamps. He uses 
antiseptic washes. He uses tooth powders and 
dentifrices. If he is of an inventive tendency he 
frequently experiments in his laboratory with com- 
binations that call for other drug-store supplies. 
He uses absorbent cotton in the patient's mouth. 
He packs absorbent cotton, dental rolls or dental 
napkins around a tooth he is filling, and though 
these are dental specialties, the druggist can supply 
them from his surgical supply house. 

If the town is a large one with many dentists, a 
circular letter might well be sent out monthly to 
each one of them. This letter should act as a means 
of keeping the dentist informed of the fact that a 
live drug store is after his business. Then when 
a representative of the store calls to solicit an order, 
his identity is already established. A good form of 
letter to use is along the following line and each 
time it should differ in form and contain some special 
mention of one featured article : 

Dear Doctor : — As a good dentist you make it a point to 
buy the best quality of dental supplies. 

79 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

As good druggists we make it a point to sell the best. 

Are you satisfied with the peroxide of hydrogen you are 
getting? Are you also satisfied with its price ? 

We have a grade we recommend particularly for dental 
work. It is the best in the market The astonishing thing 
about it is that we can sell it to you in pint bottles at a price 
no higher than you usually pay for a grade that is perhaps 
somewhat inferior. 

Full pints, delivered at your office, with our quality guar- 
antee on every bottle, for 35 cents. 

When you need anything a drug store sells, call us. We 
have a quick delivery service that won't keep you waiting. 
Yours very truly, 

Brown's Drug Store. 

These form letters may be made in duplicate on 
the typewriter and the individual names filled in 
afterward, or if the edition is large enough to make 
it desirable, a duplicator may be used. Where the 
town is small and there are but three or four den- 
tists, the druggist can write individual personal let- 
ters with a pen if he has no typewriter. The more 
personal the letters the more valuable as a means 
of advertising. 

Where some special proprietary preparation of 
interest to the dentist is stocked, it may be advisa- 
ble to insert with these letters a piece of advertising 
regarding it. An advertising blotter in the letter 
each month may prove useful to the dentist and 
help keep the store in his mind a little longer. 

But the way to get the business developed is to 
call on this trade regularly and by sampling and 
special prices get it started away from the supply 
houses. 

80 



Getting More Dgug Store Business 

Most dentists have occasion to recommend to 
their patients now and again some kind of dentifrice. 
The patients ask, " What tooth powder ought I to 
use," or some similar question, and the druggist 
ought to have the dentists on his list favorably dis- 
posed toward some preparation in his store. He 
should devote his energy along the dentifrice line 
to demonstrating the superiority of his best powder 
and proving to the profession that it is worth rec- 
ommendation. 

When a druggist finds a dentist who has a set 
powder that he insists upon advising people to buy, 
instead of wasting time trying to wean him away 
from that powder, he may better see that he has a 
good stock of it and then induce the dentist to sug- 
gest that it can be bought at his particular store. 

A similar condition will be found to exist in the 
matter of tooth brushes. Many dentists have formed 
prejudicial preferences for certain makes of brushes, 
and rather than combat them by arguing about the 
brush matter, it is wise to carry a complete line of 
those brushes, and thus get the advantage of the 
dentist's preference. 

Better than any kind of argument or advertising 
about these things is the supplying of the dentist 
with samples of powder, liquid dentifrice or brush. 
The dentist is a man, as a rule, who likes to think 
he has found out things for himself. He does not 
like to admit that any druggist may know more 
than he does about things in his own line — and 
this is not a peculiarity of dentists alone, either. 

81 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Such dental specialties as the dentist thinks he 
could not get from a druggist are aseptic dental 
napkins, absorbent cotton, dental rolls, certain kinds 
of dental floss, etc. These goods are not regularly 
stocked at the drug store, and they need not be. 
They can be sold usually to the dentist at the same 
price he pays for them in the dental-supply house, 
and yet give the druggist a small profit. The busi- 
ness in this line can be made profitable by taking 
orders in advance and not carrying the goods in the 
store. When about to send a quantity order, for 
instance, to a surgical-supply house, by calling on 
all the dentists in a town a considerable order for 
these dental specialties may be included. 

Of course, the druggist must himself be informed 
about the goods, and it will usually be well for him 
to go to some dentist who is a personal friend and 
talk over the matter with him, getting pointers on 
what items are most salable. 

The druggist should make it a point to see that 
every dentist employed by himself or any member 
of his family or store force realizes that the store is 
watching his purchases of drug-store goods and 
expecting a proper reciprocity on his part. 

When a druggist is paying his good money to a 
dentist year after year, as most of us unfortunately 
are, the dentist ought to be willing and even glad 
to buy anything he can from his patient, in order to 
show his appreciation of the patronage he gets. 

A good many dentists have the habit of carrying 
a small stock of tooth powder and giving away free 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

a bottle now and then. This is a practice that is no 
longer of any advantage to the dentist, and costs 
the drug store a sale. A little missionary work 
along this line will often induce the dentist to cease 
the practice. If he is supplied with neat cards, each 
bearing a prescription for a bottle of the desired 
tooth powder, he is apt to hand these out and thus 
save the cost of the powder. The druggist can 
easily agree that if at any time the dentist wishes 
to make the patient a present of the powder, he can 
so indicate on the card prescription, and the powder 
will be charged to the doctor at just what he would 
have to pay for it if he were buying stock to give 
away in his office. 

There are some dentists who will be tempted to 
send orders to a store that agrees to give them a 
commission on them. These men, like the physi- 
cians who want a commission on a prescription, are 
not many, and the way they are handled must de- 
pend upon the individual druggist's position on that 
question. 

Where the relations between the druggist and 
some one dentist are particularly friendly, a good 
deal of benefit may accrue to each from the willing- 
ness to work together — the dentist sending his 
patients to this store for goods recommended, and 
the druggist referring all inquiries for a "good den- 
tist " to the dentist acquaintance. 

No one individual deal thus brought about is likely 
to be of great value, but every dentist realizes what 
it may be worth to him to have a new family in town 

83 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

started with him, and the druggist knows that a 
customer of some other drug store sent specifically 
to his store by the dentist may become a regular 
patron. 

The higher class professional man the dentist is, 
the farther his recommendation of a druggist will 
go. Many a patient who has always bought Jones' 
tooth powder will in the course of a year be changed 
over to some dentifrice recommended by the den- 
tist. And if the new dentifrice works well, as of 
course it will, if used as directed, that patient 
becomes a permanent user and also a walking 
advertisement for the article every time dentifrices 
or dentists are mentioned. 

The makers of proprietaries that are of dental 
value are usually ready to sample the dentists. Take 
note of the various goods of the sort in stock and 
write the makers, asking for samples for the den- 
tists. It is better to deliver them personally rather 
than have it done by the agent of the manufacturer. 
In the latter instance the other drug stores will profit 
by the sampling as much as you will. 

Among other lines sampled to dentists are malted 
milk, milk of magnesia, tooth powders and liquids 
and pastes, mouth washes, antiseptic solutions, den- 
tal plasters, dental floss, anti-pain tablets, etc. 

The personal work will get the greatest results, 
and the druggist who can make the dentists his 
friends will get their business when he goes after it 



84 



CHAPTER XI 
Selling Olive Oil 

The demand for olive oil, both as a food and as a 
medicine, has in the past few years surpassed the 
wildest expectations of the manufacturers of two 
decades ago — and the end is not yet. 

This is an article the demand for which can be 
stimulated almost indefinitely. It has merit and it 
is harmless, rarely used to excess and possesses no 
reaction. Its medicinal effect is absolute and not 
merely transitory. 

Olive oil possesses a food value beyond almost 
any other article used as a food. It can be used by 
persons in delicate health as well as by the most 
robust. It is always safe and always valuable. It 
is indicated in practically all wasting diseases, in 
cases of malnutrition and in all persons of low 
vitality. 

It is prescribed by physicians. It is recommended 
by the lay public. It is enormously popular as a 
salad component for the table. It is equally popular 
as a strength -maker for self -medication. It has at 
once the selling qualities of a patent medicine and 
the virtues of a health food. The druggist can 
recommend it without fear to anyone. 

Under such conditions it is not remarkable that 
the sales of olive oil have steadily gone up. It offers 
the drug store a chance to increase its sales right 
among its regular customers without having to draw 

85 



Gettino More Drug Store Business 

upon the trade of someone else, which may be 
harder to get. 

And still a very large proportion of your cus- 
tomers do not yet realize the advantages to be 
gained from the use of olive oil in greater quantities. 

The sale of olive oil for table purposes has until 
lately been largely in the hands of the grocers and 
provision dealers, and this has been partly because 
people naturally go to such stores for food products 
and partly because the grocers have gone after the 
business. The time has come for the druggists to 
get after the olive oil business, in a way they never 
did before — and get it. 

One of the first necessities is for the dealer to 
find out what constitutes good olive oil. The fact 
that it is technically pure is not of itself an evidence 
of quality. Olive oil may be made from nothing but 
olives and yet be a poor article. There are olives 
and olives. 

It is entirely believable that an oil might be part 
cotton seed, and even then be better than one made 
from poor olives. Just as one might make cider 
from the cullings of the orchard, gnarled and knotty 
little runts of apples, worm-eaten and partly decayed^ 
and still call it pure cider, so one might make olive 
oil that would be of no higher grade, and yet call it 
pure olive oil. 

If possible, one should buy the oil from a firm 
whose word is absolutely reliable, so that when they 
say their oil is made from selected olives, it can be 
depended upon that such is the case. The best 

86 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

experts in the olive oil trade claim that the best oil 
is made from olives from the oldest trees. The 
older the trees the better the oil. Let the dealer 
take up the details of the manufacture of a brand of 
oil with the importers and find out just what he is 
getting so that he can recommend it to his cus- 
tomers right up to the limit. It goes without saying 
that a man who wants to boom the sale of any 
article ought to be posted on the history and uses 
of that article as well as upon the facts regarding its 
manufacture. 

It is not necessary to go into the history of olive 
oil here, as that can be learned from any encyclo- 
pedia, but I am going to enumerate some of the 
uses of the oil for which it may be recommended in 
the advertising I hope you are going to do. 

That olive oil is particularly valuable for stomach 
troubles, is indicated by the rarity of such maladies 
among the natives of the great olive oil producing 
countries of Europe. Eaten with food, olive oil is a 
great aid to digestion and assists the alimentary 
canal in taking care of food throughout its length. 
Olive oil is easily taken and easily assimilated. 

When your joints get rusty and need lubricating, 
olive oil will do the business. You know of people 
of dry temperament physically, the lean and Cassius 
kind of folk, whose knee joints grate when they go 
down stairs. They have articular rheumatism in 
the knees, shoulders or hips. The synovial fluid 
that oils the joints is lacking. The use of olive oil 
internally will produce this fluid, and the applica- 

87 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

tion of the oil to the joints will help also. Recom- 
mend olive oil for rheumatism of all kinds. It oils 
up the dry joints and it increases the vitality where 
rheumatism is due to run-down systems. 

For massage work there is no patent preparation 
that will exceed olive oil in results or in safety of 
use. It removes the wrinkles and it fills up the 
hollows and it is absolutely harmless. The olive oil 
users have little need for a beauty doctor to help 
them to retain their youthful appearance. The oil 
will do more for them than any other medium. 

Olive oil applied well to the scalp and rubbed in 
thoroughly, washing the hair afterward with Castile 
soap, will prove one of the best of hair growers. 

For people who are afraid of appendicitis — and 
that includes everybody who hasn't already been 
operated upon, and some that have — there is noth- 
ing like olive oil. It relieves their intestinal trouble 
and their minds too. It is the best of anything for 
this condition. 

Then, too, you can recommend the oil for liver 
complaint, bladder and kidney diseases, tubercular 
affections, grippe, fevers, earache, burns, scalds, cuts 
and wounds. Besides these uses you know of many 
others that have developed in your own experience. 

Having posted yourself on the making of oil and 
its uses and its physical properties, the next thing 
is to stock up with a line that you can stand behind. 
The sizes of packages that you can handle depend 
upon competition somewhat. You must meet the 
grocers in price, quantity and quality being equah 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

One druggist, successfully handling olive oil, does 
not carry a great variety. He has just one grade of 
oil he considers equal to any. This he has in quarts 
in tin, stone jugs and five-gallon cans from which he 
takes his bulk stock. This latter he sells by the 
full pint at a price to match the grocer's short pint, 
container included. He advertises and recommends 
the two original packages on account of the advan- 
tages of having the oil in light-proof containers. 
Stone jugs are particularly to be recommended as 
being light-proof, air-tight, and sufficiently absorbent 
to take up the minute, invisible particles of moisture 
from the oil. 

Of course the window displays help sell olive oil 
if they have good show cards, telling the grade of 
the oil, mentioning some of its uses and quoting 
prices, calling particular attention to the fact that I 
give full measure : a pint where a pint is claimed, etc. 

A good olive oil booklet mailed to a good list, is 
one of the best and most productive of advertising 
plans. Sometimes manufacturers have booklets 
that they will supply for mailing. 

A little eight-page booklet that will slip into a No. 
6^ envelope is about the right style. Call it, on the 
cover, " Your Good Health/' Then devote a page 
to the oil quality, then one to the style of packages 
with their advantages and prices, and fill the remain- 
ing pages with the mention in detail of the actual 
uses to which the oil can be put — with some good 
cooking recipes for its use if you have room. 

The newspaper advertising must be made also to 

8 9 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

help the oil sales. Each individual advertisement 
ought to bring up one special point about the oil you 
sell and make that point plain to readers, always 
giving the prices and emphasizing the full measure 
idea, for here is where the druggist has an advan- 
tage. Practically no glass packages of oil put up 
by the manufacturers are full pints or half-pints. 
They may pass for such, but they will not hold out. 
The grocers do not talk half-pints or pints ; they 
talk 25c, 50c, 75c bottles, etc. 

And referring again to window displays, do not 
make the error made by many grocers of exhibiting 
olive oil in glass in the windows, as the strong light 
will injure the flavor. In the window use only the 
opaque containers. 

Cultivate in your customers the quart can habit, 
or even half -gallon cans. Some people need only a 
little, but a very large proportion of the purchasers 
of oil can be induced to buy a quart can if the right 
sort of salesmanship is used and the guarantee is 
promised that if the oil does not prove satisfactory 
in every way the can may be returned and the money 
will be refunded. Get the little users up to the 
quart size whenever possible, and it will increase 
the consumption of oil. Also there is a market 
among the hotels and boarding houses for the larger 
cans, gallons or five gallons, and this trade must be 
sought. It is not likely to come of its own accord. 
If you live in a small place you can canvass these 
people. If you live in a larger town, mail advertis- 
ing to them if you prefer. 

90 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

You need not be afraid of overdoing the olive oil 
business, as long as you do not spend more money 
in pushing it than the profits warrant. The busi- 
ness is capable of great extension. It has by no 
means reached the limit of its development, and the 
druggist who needs the money and finds himself 
limited in other directions has here an outlet which 
should keep him busy for a time at least. 



9i 



CHAPTER XII 

More Hot Water Bottle Sales 

Most families keep a hot water bottle hanging up 
in the bath room and when that one springs a leak 
they may be depended upon to buy another — before 
long. 

This means that there is a regular demand for 
hot water bottles to keep up the normal supply in 
users' hands. But it must not be forgotten that 
there are many households where the hot water 
bottle has not been introduced, and many others 
where its uses are not fully appreciated and where 
one is so seldom employed that it lasts indefinitely. 

It is within the power of the druggist to increase 
the number of users of hot water bottles and to 
increase as well the number of ways in which each 
is used. Consumption of goods of this class can be 
very much enlarged, and trade in them stimulated, 
by advertising partly along the educational line. 

Of course the logical time to push sales is in the 
fall, when there is the argument of coming cold 
weather and approaching winter. As a matter of 
fact there is almost as much need for hot water 
bottles for many purposes in warm weather, but the 
public does not realize it. 

The sale during the winter is so certain that the 
druggist, basing his purchase on the number of 
bottles sold the previous winter, can afford to make 
a considerable purchase early in the fall, with a view 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

to getting the best price and securing a quantity 
that will make a good showing and enable him to 
make displays conspicuous by their volume. 

A first opening and display, coupled with gener- 
ous advertising of the line, should take place while 
the stock is at its high water mark. There should 
be a window display with one or two windows filled 
with the goods. Little displays showing the differ- 
ent grades and sizes should be made around the 
store inside. 

Put a display of the special, low-priced bottle on 
one showcase, of the medium-priced on another. 
Show the bottles all over the store, no matter how 
large it may be. Arrange things so that if a cus- 
tomer has possibly got in without seeing the goods 
in the window he cannot get out without having 
seen them inside the store. 

In order to make these displays and the window 
trim all work together, the cards on the goods ought 
to have a certain uniformity of plan. They should 
be similar in general appearance, and while on each 
there should be a statement as to quality and the 
price of the bottle, there should also be an inscrip- 
tion something like this : " See other displays of 
other grades and the big display in the window ! " 

Hot water bottles are so attractively put up now- 
adays that they can be made to look very well indeed 
in a display. And where the colors of the box do 
not bring out the shade of the rubber in good con- 
trast, a sheet of paper of suitable color can be slipped 
in behind the bottle. The little matter of getting 

93 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

a red or a white or a gray hot water bottle on a 
strongly contrasting background has everything to 
do with making the goods stand out. 

Neat price cards on a color of bristol board that 
contrasts with the color of the hot water bottle 
when laid against the bottle itself show up strongly, 
though they ought not to cover up the name on the 
bottle. 

Though it may seem that the name of the bottle 
is not of much value, still it ought to be played for 
what it is worth. No one is going to consider the 
name anything against a bottle, and many people 
who have had a bottle of some one brand that has 
proved satisfactory will look for that name when 
contemplating another purchase. On this account 
it is desirable to continue year after year to stock 
as far as it proves satisfactory a bottle with a name 
known to your customers. 

If a novelty in the way of a feature can be intro- 
duced into your window display of the bottle it will 
help attract attention ; and if it can be something 
calling attention particularly to the strength of the 
bottle it will make sales. 

A good way to show up the strength and conse- 
quent durability of your best hot water bottle is to 
fill one and put it in the center of the display, lay a 
board across it, and on this board place a large 
weight. You have probably heard hot water bottle 
salesmen tell of the tremendous pressure they have 
known their bottles to withstand. Arrange to 
demonstrate this to the public by laying a board 

94 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

across one or two filled bottles and placing thereon 
a barrel of something that looks heavy but will not 
be heavy enough to burst the bottles. You will 
have to decide for yourself whether the bottles will 
hold up a barrel of flour or a barrel of water or a 
half-barrel of something. 

If you wanted to demonstrate with a man in the 
window, you could hire a heavy man for the pur- 
pose, filling the hot water bottle, screwing in the 
cap, and then laying the bottle on the floor and 
having the man stand on it to show its strength. 

Along with the window display, the newspaper 
and other advertising ought to be worked to the 
fullest extent. Here is a good form of a newspaper 
advertisement to use in opening the season in the 
fall: 

CHILLY NIGHTS COMING. 

Before you start the fires this fall there will be many 
nights when the air will be frosty. 

Don't try to go to sleep with cold feet. 

Unless you sleep warm you cannot sleep well. 

Get a hot water bottle the first thing instead of waiting 
until the thermometer hits zero. Get the benefit of it now 
when you need it even more than in colder weather when 
the heat is turned on. 

We can fit anybody's pocketbook with a hot water bottle 
price : 

78 cents; $1.00; £1.25; $1.50; and up to $2.75. All sizes 
and all grades and any color. The good ones are all war- 
ranted, some for one year and some for two years. 

Brown's Pharmacy. 

Here is another form of advertisement : 

95 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

HOW'S YOUR HOT WATER BOTTLE? 

Did you finish up the one you had last winter so it is of no 
use now ? 

Better look it up and see about it before you find yourself 
needing it some night only to discover then that it is played 
out. 

Find the leak today, if there is one, and get prepared for 
the coming of cold feet, rheumatism, neuralgia or anything 
that is helped by the direct application of heat. 

Many a pain will yield to a hot water bottle and save 
taking medicine your stomach does not want 

We have hot water bottles from a pint to 3 quarts. We 
have them from 48 cents to $2.50. 

For #1.75 we can give you a very heavy pure gum bottle 
warranted for two years, 2-quart size. This is our own guar- 
antee, and if the bottle fails bring it back to us and get 
another without trouble or expense. No red tape tied around 
this guarantee. 

Brown's Pharmacy. 

MAILING THE STOPPER. 

A little advertising scheme that can be used to 
advantage among a limited number of families known 
to be good prospective purchasers of hot water bot- 
tles is something in the following line : 

THIS STOPPER WORTH 25 CENTS. 
This is a hot water bottle stopper. We have here at our 
store the bottle it fits. 
Bring in the stopper and let us show you the bottle. 
The bottle is a #1.75 grade, pure red gum, warranted for 
two years. 

If you bring in the stopper you can have one of these bot- 
tles for #1.50. 

Brown's Pharmacy. 

The novelty of such an advertisement will be sure 

96 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

to get it the desired attention, and the saving of 25 
cents will appeal to any one in the market for a hot 
water bag. If you are afraid people will use the 
stoppers for old bottles instead of bringing them in, 
take off the washers before sending them out. 

A MAILING CARD. 

Here is a suggestion for an advertisement for a 
mailing card to be sent out to the store's mailing 
list: 

PAIN INSURANCE. 

Would you pay 3 cents a week to be insured against pain 
for the cold half of a year ? 

Did you know that a good hot water bottle properly used 
will stop ninety per cent of the pains you are called upon to 
bear? 

For 78 cents we will sell you a 2-quart hot water bottle 
guaranteed to last the next six months (it would probably 
last a good deal longer). This means 3 cents a week until 
warm weather comes again. 

This 3 cents a week is practically pain insurance. Isn't it 
worth the price? Let us send one of these good 78-cent bot- 
tles around to the house for examination. You need not buy 

unless you really want to. 

Brown's Pharmacy. 

A card listing all the many uses of the hot water 
bottle in stopping pain or in producing comfort or 
alleviating illness will make a good stimulator of 
business along this line. Such a card headed " Hot 
Water Bottle Uses," and ending, u Good hot water 
bottles from 78 cents up at Brown's Pharmacy," 
can be used for insertion with bills and statements, 
for slipping into parcels and for mailing out direct. 

97 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

A few of them should be kept scattered, right side 
up, on the show-cases throughout the store, where 
they will give the waiting customer something to 
read for a moment. These will serve as an excellent 
reminder to the man or woman who has intended 
to get a new hot water bottle, but who forgets it 
when down-town. 

If the druggist makes it a point so to adjust his 
advertising and so to display his stock that no one 
can come in without being reminded that hot water 
bottles are sold there, and that they have such and 
such uses, the increase in sales is bound to be 
remarkably satisfactory. People want and need the 
goods, and in no end of instances are holding off 
from buying them through sheer neglect or forget- 
fulness. 

Such work as I have mentioned will make new 
customers and it will remind old customers. It will 
stimulate the hot water bottle trade to an extent 
that will make it one of the most important factors 
of the fall business. 



98 



CHAPTER XIII 

Speeding Up Cigar Sales. 

Every drug store sells cigars. 

A druggist's cigar trade is usually in a direct 
ratio to the quality of his cigars, and the ones who 
sit around and complain that their cigar case is a 
worthless appendage are usually the ones who do 
not give their customers their money's worth in 
those goods. 

There is more competition in this line than in 
almost any other line the druggist carries. In the 
smaller places every grocery store and barber shop 
and hotel and restaurant is in the business and even 
in small villages there is usually at least one cigar 
store. In cities the newstands and chain cigar 
stores cut up the trade still further. 

But taking one town with another, there is oppor- 
tunity for most druggists to work up a good deal 
more cigar business than is usually obtained. 

The cigar department is apt to be forgotten when 
the advertising schedule is made up. All good 
druggists try to keep a line of goods that will appeal 
to their trade and occasionally they attempt to inter- 
est a new customer by giving away a cigar or two. 
That is commendable but it falls far short of the 
mark. It produces negligible results if any. 

With the average drug store, then, it simmers 
down to a case of taking care of what cigar trade 
comes along and calling it square. That certainly 

99 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

is not giving a very valuable branch of the business 
a fair show. 

As a matter of fact, cigars are more difficult to 
advertise than almost anything else in the drug 
store. Running a cigar ad in your regular news- 
paper space with about the same frequency you 
give to any other single line of stock will be of very 
little use. There must be special advertising gotten 
up for the express purpose of reaching the smoker. 
It must be made to reach him and to crowd itself 
upon his attention. The average man whose cigar 
trade you would like to get is a person who will not 
pay much attention to an ordinary advertisement. 
It must be extraordinary. 

In the first place, you must look well after the 
store part of your cigar business. f That means that 
you want the cigar case to be near the door in a 
good light and with a good lighter. Have an auto- 
matic clipper and keep the lighter clean, bright and 
always working perfectly. Be sure it is convenient 
of access X 

There is a vast difference in the way different 
druggists arrange the cigars in their cases. It all 
counts too. In the first place, have modern mois- 
teners in the showcase. Some swear by the hang- 
ing kind, but as they take up room and obstruct the 
view of the contents of the case, I think trays that 
fit into the bottom of the case are preferable. A 
modern type of cigar case humidor is the best thing. 
It is certainly important that the cigars be kept of 
just the right moisture. Smokers soon find out 

ioo 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

where the cigars are apt to be dry so they will 
crumble in the mouth, to say nothing of crumbling 
in the pocket of the purchaser. 

The druggist is usually "short" on knowledge of 
the character of the different sorts of tobacco. He 
treats them all alike and consequently spoils some 
of his cigars by having them too dry and others by 
having them too wet. 

The average low-priced domestic cigar needs to be 
kept only fairly moist — just enough so as to be 
agreeable to hold it in the mouth. It will not injure 
it to get a little dry so long as it is made right when 
put on sale. The imported Havanas will not be 
spoiled by keeping. Age will ordinarily improve 
them and they can be moistened up again when they 
get too dry. But good Porto Rico cigars are a very 
different proposition. And right here I would like 
to say that doubtless many of the dealers who have 
had poor success with these goods probably have 
their lack of knowledge of how to care for them to 
blame. 

The Porto Rican stock should be bought as green 
as you can get it. If the cigars have been dried out 
at all, don't take them. Keep these goods as green 
as you can. They are foil wrapped and will not 
dry in a cold or a moist place. A Porto Rico cigar 
that has been dry once will never be anything more 
than a bunch of hay afterwards. 

Keep such cigars wet until they go into the case. 
If they are so green that they will not burn let 
them stand open on the case for a day. It is a good 

IOI 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

fault. It is a scheme worth while anyway to keep a 
box of the cigars that you are pushing principally on 
top of the case where they will get especial attention. 

You can buy the Porto Rican goods at a price 
that will give you a nice margin to play on, if you 
know where to get them. Don't expect them to be 
pretty cigars, for they are apt to look rather rough, 
but they are the H pure quill " — nothing but tobacco 
in its unadulterated state. The smokers that like 
them will stick to them and will not go back to the 
"doped" goods, though they may switch off onto 
higher priced Havana cigars. 
.When you have your case properly moistened, 
put in the boxes in the way that will best show the 
goods, and show the box covers as well. There are 
patent fasteners that will make the back of a box 
stand up straight, but they are a needless expense. 
When you take the nail out of the box, drive it down 
through the cover just as it was before but at the 
back ; then open up the box carefully, and, presto ! 
the lid will stand at any angle. The boxes will take 
up much less room in this way than in the old bend- 
the-cover-back style. They look better, too. 

With the boxes properly arranged in the case, 
each one should be marked with the price and kind 
of cigars it contains. Use black cards with the 
inscription put on in white ink. This makes a far 
more attractive card than any other. The uniform- 
ity of the cards adds, too. Stand them upright in 
the front end of each box. They look best this way 
and are easily read. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

Always have plenty of good matches on the top 
of the case, and encourage your customers to take 
all they want. Matches are cheap. Don't be stingy 
with them. Offer a small box to every purchaser. 
Not many will take one, but it looks generous and 
is not really expensive^ 

Another thing that counts is to have plenty of the 
little cigar pockets, preferably the ones that come in 
long strips separating each cigar by itself so that 
the wrappers will not be broken by the cigars rub- 
bing against one another. 

When it comes to the actual advertising of cigars, 
there are various propositions open to the dealer ; 
the newspapers, the mailing list plans, odds and ends 
in the way of imprinted novelties, and some others. 

Some novelties as match safes and other pocket 
things which men like to carry are of little value as 
advertising. They get you some good *wifl, but 
that's all. The newspaper advertising must be 
quite extensive to be productive of much return, 
and at that rate will crowd out your other lines too 
much. 

If you can use a mailing list, that will prove the 
best result-bringer for the money invested. 

Below I give the copy for a few ads that can be 
utilized with very little change. The first two I had 
printed upon the large 7 by 11 inch postal cards. 
The first one depended for its point upon a letter 
which I think I copied from some paper. The 
entire ad was printed in single column, 12-point type 
down the middle of the back of the card. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

RATHER FUNNY. 
The following letter was received by a Quebec firm of 
bicycle manufacturers from one of their customers : 

Sherebrook, P. Q. 
mister T. J. Jones and companee, 

Notre Dame street Montreal, P. Q. 
Dear sir; — 

I receev de bicykel witch I by from you alrite but for why 
you dont send me no saddel, wat is de use of de bicykel when 
She dont have no saddel. 

i am lose to me my kustomer sure ting by no having de 
saddel and dats not very pleasure for Me. wat is de matter 
wit you mister jones and companee, is not my moneys so 
good like anoder mans you lose to me my trade and i am 
very anger for dat an now i tells to you dat you are a dam 
fools and no good mister jones and companee. 

i send to you back at once you bicykel tomorro for shure 
bekawse you are such a dam foolishness peopel. yours re- 
speckfullee, J. B. St. Dennis. 

P. S. since i rite this letter i find de saddel in de box. 
excuse to me. 

MISTER MAN; 

dere is only one place for cigars to buy in dis town. Did 
you it know dat places was mister jon smith his drug stores 
he have de good cigars more as all oder stores, dis card 
present by dose man who is name on oder side is for five cent 
cigar good. 



This card is good 
for a 5c 

cigar at Smith's. 



Get up the second card in the same way as the 
first and send it to the same persons. Here is the 
copy: 

104 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

QUEER SMOKES. 

In the Philippines the use of tobacco is universal. The 
native child acquires the tobacco habit as soon as it is able 
to walk. 

In the northern provinces especially it is no uncommon 
sight to see a child five or six years old puffing vigorously at 
a big cigar The women smoke fully as much as the men, 
and commonly smoke cigars where the men use cigarettes. 

In the northern part of Luzon immense cigars, often a 
couple of feet long and as thick as the wrist, are used. Such 
a cigar is suspended from a rafter of the house by a string 
and smoked during the day by all members of the family as 
desired. 

NO FAMILY SMOKES. 

We are out of the family size smokes just now. 

Perhaps you do not care for that sort anyway ? 

There is one thing certain : we have a line of cigars that 
will give you more good brands to choose from than any 
other stock that we know of. 

We have made a little study of cigar handling lately, and 
have found out a few new things worth knowing about taking 
care of the goods. As a result, our cigars are not only better 
stock, bought with more knowledge of the goods, but they 
are better cared for. 

We know just the right way to treat each particular sort 
of tobacco, and we appreciate the fact that tobacco is an 
article requiring more care than anything else, even in a drug 
store, if it is to be kept right. 

We invite your criticism of our cigar selling methods. If 
you do not find your favorite brand at our store, let us get it 
for you — provided we have not something here that you will 
like even better. 

Smith's Drug Store. 

A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT. 

A simple little ad, easily gotton up and easily 
mailed, is a heavy white visiting card, sent out in 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

an envelope to fit it, the card being printed in visit- 
ing card style : 



Smoke "Corn Silk," 
Smith's new 5c 

Cigar. 



Advertising matter mailed in this way to smokers 
will have an excellent chance of success in getting 
results for the reason that not much of this sort of 
advertising has been done. If the possibilities of 
the business warrant it, it would be wise to send 
out something new once a month. But whatever 
you do in the way of pushing your cigar business, 
remember that the more pains you take with your 
stock and with your cigar customers, the harder you 
try to please them, the better results you will get. 
Smokers are notoriously notional. Cater to their 
notions ! 



106 



CHAPTER XIV 
The Candy Case. 

Most drug stores carry a line of confectionery of 
some sort. In many cases it is a poorly arranged 
and ill-sustained stock, given less attention than 
almost any other department of the store. In such 
cases it is a losing investment. It not only fails to 
pay a profit of itself but it creates an unfavorable 
impression with customers who find themselves 
offered stale candy, soiled packages or low-grade 
goods. 

This condemnation does not apply to the drug- 
gist who is handling his candy trade in the right 
way. It applies to stores like one the writer visited 
the other day, where the candy stock was repre- 
sented by something under a dozen boxes, some of 
them left over from Christmas, as was obvious by 
Vthe holly wrappers, and all placed in the top of a 
little floor case near the door with atomizers and a 
few other sundries mixed in. v 

This store was at a corner where in cold weather 
many people step inside to wait for cars. It is safe 
to say that few of those people took occasion to 
make their candy purchases there. 
fA small stock of candy is not necessarily a dis- 
couraging feature with the customer. In fact, it is 
often the small stock that is the fresh stock. In 
the case of the above druggist, if he had cleaned 
out the case and taken out all the other goods, 
keeping his small supply of candy well assorted and 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

fresh in appearance, people would not hesitate to 
buy there. I would have spent a dollar with him 
myself willingly. As it was I waited until I found 
a drug store where the conditions were more favor- 
able. 

The man with the small store and the little case 
might impress people favorably regarding his stock 
of candy by some such little scheme as the use of a 
neat show card, reading H We guarantee this stock 
fresh today/ ' and in one corner of the card he 
should stick each morning the new leaf from a daily 
memorandum calendar pad, thus bringing the card 
right up to date. 

The minute the show card begins to look as 
though it had not been made that day — away 
with it ! \ 

The drug store into which I wandered after pass- 
ing by the man who preferred sitting with his feet 
up on the stove and his hat on, while he argued 
with someone about the best horse in town, rather 
than fix up the candy case, was the entire antithesis 
of the first. 

Here candy was given a long show case, and 
though the stock was not large for the size of the 
case, there was a splendid variety. Care seemed to 
be taken to keep the variety up, though each kind 
was stocked in a small quantity in order to maintain 
a fresh stock. 

The packages were spread out to make a good 
showing, every brand and style having room, and 
the packages, as is often true in a large stock, were 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

none of them shelf -worn in appearance. Where 
outside wrappers had become torn in handling they 
had evidently been removed. 

After making my purchase I heard the proprietor 
telephoning to a local jobber for a quarter dozen of 
a style of package I had asked for and was not in 
stock. Of course, it is possible for the drug store 
in a city where jobbers are located to keep up stock 
with much less trouble and expense than in a coun- 
try town, but the man who is really anxious to keep 
up a stock of fresh goods will do it if he's in the 
Klondike section. It is more the man than the 
opportunity, or lack of it. 

Many druggists find it profitable to handle the 
bulk candy. This is especially true in the smaller 
places. Personally, the writer found the bulk 
candy business unprofitable, and threw it out and 
gave up all the space to package goods. The bulk 
candy called for endless 5c sales, which brought no 
profit. It called for spending valuable time in sell- 
ing children candy at a loss, because they either 
wanted for a penny about five cents' worth of goods, 
or else they were sent away with the idea that the 
store was a stingy one — and no man who is in 
business to stay can afford to antagonize the little 
people. It called for down weight and further loss 
by breakage of pieces, stale goods, help-themselves 
customers and clerks, etc. The package idea is 
much the nicer way, the easier and the quicker, and 
people nowadays like it better. 

In order to make candy pay its way there should 
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Getting More Drug Store Business 

be a large volume of sales, and this requires some 
advertising all the while. Sporadic attempts to 
build up a trade will not amount to anything more 
than the cost of the publicity. 

Few druggists realize the possibilities of the 
candy trade. It is not like the trade in anything 
else the dealer sells, unless it may be cigars. It 
bears a resemblance to the cigar trade. 

A customer purchases a bottle of cough cure and 
it cures his cough, or at least he gets over it, and 
he needs no more. He buys an atomizer and it 
lasts him a year or two. He buys a pound box of 
candy and the next day he may be ready for an- 
other. More than that, if he was suited, he is ready 
for another of the same sort. The candy business 
can be developed on this account to an almost un- 
limited extent. 

The druggist should make up his mind when he 
begins pushing the line that he can afford to sell 
the first pound to a customer without profit. That 
is, he can afford to spend the profit on the first sale 
for advertising and depend upon the repeat sales to 
make his money. 

Many candy advertisers confine their advertise- 
ments to a simple statement that they carry a cer- 
tain line of goods. Hundreds of drug stores all 
over the country are advertising candy in a way that 
cannot prove profitable because it does not make 
the people want the goods. No matter how well 
known the line for which a store has the agency, 
there are plenty of people who do not know that 

no 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

line and are not interested in it. There are also 
plenty who do know about it, but who do not know 
that it is superior in any way. 

Furthermore, the very people whom the dealer 
wants to interest are those who do not know about 
the line he carries, and an advertisement that is a 
mere statement that such and such a line is carried 
assumes altogether too much. It will make no 
sales to new customers. It will only help a little, 
mighty little, on repeats. 

Candy advertising should describe certain pack- 
ages and their contents in such a way that it will 
make the reader's mouth water for the goods. Such 
advertising is not as hard to write as it might seem. 

One of the best ways to introduce any line of 
goods that is in the confectionery class is by sam- 
pling them. It is possible in this way to get the 
introductory package into the hands of a new cus- 
tomer very easily, and without much expense. One 
way is by giving away a good-sized package with a 
purchase of a certain amount. For instance, a box 
that costs you 25c may be given with a purchase 
amounting to a dollar. A special like this would 
make a big day's business if handled right, and it 
would introduce the candy to innumerable people 
who never tried it before. And if the goods were 
all right, there would be further sales that would 
pay for any possible loss on the first. If the goods 
were not all right, it would be very foolish to make 
any such proposition regarding them. 

The confectioner has the advantage of the drug- 
iii 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

gist in advertising the line, for he has no other line 
he must advertise. He can devote all his space to 
confectioner publicity, and it is important that candy 
have publicity. The druggist cannot afford to give 
up advertising his chief business for the sake of a 
side line, and yet this is a side line that can not sub- 
sist on half advertising rations. 

The best way is probably to give up a section of 
the regular space to candy advertising, or else to 
run a smaller separate ad. for that line. 

No line offers a better chance to make special 
offers without permanently disorganizing prices than 
the candy line. The variety of styles and makes of 
package goods is without limit, and a special sale 
can be run on one style without making any future 
trouble. 

The writer has found a confectionery journal of 
great value in keeping in touch with what is new in 
that line of goods, and has in that way got in touch 
with some great successes. Of course this is true 
in any line. The man who tries to run a store 
without trade journals to help him steer his way 
and post him on the outside news of the trade will 
fall far short of the success he otherwise might 
gain. 

Window displays are valuable helps in making the 
candy go. A display that shows opened packages, 
letting the public get their eyes upon the candy 
itself, will make sales as a direct result. 

There is no line of goods that sells on sight as 
readily as goods that are to be eaten. Such goods 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

will sell themselves to a great extent if they are 
given a chance. But no goods can be depended 
upon to build up a big individual business of their 
own without something beside mere display. 

As much of the candy display as possible should 
bear plain price cards and names of variety, and 
when feasible there should be opened boxes show- 
ing what the goods are like. Novelties are desir- 
able and help much in attracting attention. There 
are always seasonable novelties that sell for Easter, 
Christmas, Thanksgiving or other holiday occasion. 
A few of these to make the stock look up to date 
are desirable, but any kind of package that shows 
that it is old after a certain day has passed should 
be handled in small quantities and disposed of early. 

Novelties sell best in low-priced goods. The 
people who buy the expensive boxes usually want 
standard styles of package. 

Get hold of plenty of novelties and don't try to 
run any of them too long. When the sales on a 
novelty begin to wane, get rid of it and put some- 
thing new in its place. There are many novelties 
that will sell quickly to the extent of a few cartons 
and then stop dead. Take on novelty candy for its 
novelty value, but don't count on its sale being 
continuous. 

The candy trade of a school is always business 
of considerable importance and volume. It is not 
necessary to carry the penny lines demanded by 
the smallest children unless you have plenty of 
space and help, but in the next class, the nickel and 

"3 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

dime lines and better, you can well afford to feature 
a large variety of goods with constantly changing 
variety, especially in milk chocolates, fruit tablets, 
chocolate bars and chewing gum. 

Whatever the success of the candy business, the 
line will be found not to interfere with other lines 
in the store, and it will work in well with the soda- 
water trade, and bring in many people who will 
make other and profitable purchases, though the 
candy they buy may be sold very close. 



114 



CHAPTER XV 

Selling More Soap 

When I was in the drug business soap didn't 
look good to me. 

It wasn't that I didn't have plenty of it, nor that 
I didn't use enough. I had a show-case full and 
about once a month I would take home a number 
of damaged, aged, chipped or broken cakes. But I 
couldn't sell enough soap to buy a thrift stamp on 
the monthly payment basis. The grocers and the 
mail-order houses had me going on soap. I just 
kept it. 

One day, after I had just turned down a sales- 
man, I sat looking at the soap show-case, contem- 
plating, I have to admit, closing out the entire line 
and putting in dill pickles or shoe-laces or some- 
thing profitable, 

A thought the salesman had left kept cropping 
up in my mind, however. He had remarked several 
times, "Folks haven't begun to buy medicated 
soaps yet." 

They hadn't begun, and it didn't look as if they 
were going to begin, as far as I was concerned. 

But now that I thought the matter over I saw 
another side to it. That other side was that there 
was a chance that folks would begin, or that they 
could be made to begin ; and, knowing as I did the 
value of medicated soaps, I wondered why I couldn't 
make them begin. 

I went to the telephone and called up the Ameri- 

115 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

can house and asked if my soap salesman had left 
town yet. He was just getting into the depot 
omnibus. 

" Call him back ! " I said, " and send him down 
to my store." 

The outcome was a good-sized order for soap — 
medicated soap. Of course I already had medicated 
soap ; I had the usual assortment of boxes of a 
quarter-dozen each of half a dozen different kinds 
of the best known varieties. My whole stock piled 
on the floor wouldn't have tripped up a one-legged 
blind man, though. I bought enough so I could be 
really considered in the business. 

While I was waiting for the goods to come I 
studied the soap game a little and I cleared out my 
soap show-case. I put all the soap in the window, 
except some perfectly good and staple kinds, and I 
put prices on the goods that moved them right in 
the face of competition and soap clubs. 

Then, when the new soap came, I was ready for 
it. I had my stock down to staples. I put no per- 
fumed toilet soaps back into the show-case, but 
found a place elsewhere. I was going to use that 
particular case for goods on which I was not up 
against the competition of free premiums, mail- 
order catalogues, and juvenile peddlers, 
/f Into that case (and, I forgot to say, I moved the 
case nearly to the front of the store) I put a nice 
little display of each kind of medicated soap I 
bought. I didn't just set in one box of a kind and 
pack them in as closely together as they would go. 

116 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

I took several boxes of a kind — what I had of 
most kinds — and made unit displays of them. For 
example, in the bottom was a display of an antisep- 
tic soap on which I put a card that gave the following 
information : " Blank's Antiseptic Soap, destroys 
perspiration odors ; prevents infection ; stops itch- 
ing; sterilizes garments and utensils: kills germs; 
harmless ; 25c. cake." 

On one side of this I placed a pile of Castile soap 
and I used this card : u Pure Castile. We defy 
competition on this soap. You can't get as pure a 
soap anywhere for less money, 10c. and 15c. Mail- 
order or soap-club cakes weigh less, are not as 
pure." 

On the other side I arranged a pile of guest-room 
soaps. You see this case was mainly medicated 
soaps, but the medicated idea was not what I was 
going to emphasize. I called this a case of specialty 
soaps, and above it I hung a big card : u Specialty 
Soaps — Get the right soap for each purpose and 
save money. " If I had said "medicated soaps," 
most people would have turned away from the sign, 
thinking st I don't need any medicine soap." 

My idea was to interest people in choosing a 
special soap for a special purpose, knowing that 
they would get better results, better satisfaction, 
and that I would place myself outside of the com- 
petition I couldn't meet easily* 

I arranged displays of carbolic soap, bichloride 
soap, borated soap, tar soap, and others. A display 
of shaving soap bore the following card : " A sixth 

117 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

of a cent per shave. Makes shaving easy, satisfac- 
tory and cheap/ ' I showed the shaving soap in 
cakes, tubes and sticks. Tooth soap bore this 
inscription : u Tastes good. Gives a pleasant breath. 
Easiest to use. No waste." Tar soap was carded : 
"Keep your hair beautiful and keep it growing. 
Tar soap beats fake tonics/' For the shampoo soap 
in bottles, I said : " A shampoo a week will make 
your hair sleek. " 

By using these informative cards I interested 
people. When a customer stopped in front of this 
case I noticed at once that he or she read not only 
one card, but all of them, following them along and 
getting the information I had put out there. 

Most people don't know anything about medi- 
cated soaps except that they have seen some of 
them recommended for pimples or something like 
that. Here were " specialty soaps," a comparatively 
new idea. A soap for every need, to say nothing 
of a need for every soap. Take the baby soap that 
I featured, for instance ; a perfectly pure olive oil 
soap. I said, " Be careful what soap you use for 
baby ! Treat your own skin to impurities if you 
like, but take care of the baby. This soap is spec- 
ially for babies. It keeps them smiling." 

I transferred this whole display into the window 
at one time and gave the public a " specialty soap " 
window to look at. They took an interest in it, 
too. It was one of the best selling windows I ever 
put in. 

Then I started in my regular newspaper space a 
118 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

series of soap advertisements and I featured them 
as " soap secrets," numbering them serially — i, 2, 
3, etc. These appeared daily while the window dis- 
play was on exhibition. As each advertisement was 
run, I had the printers take the advertisement out 
and run off a supply of parcel slips from it before 
destroying the ad. 

I suppose you'd call this all a soap experiment, 
but it turned out to be a regular business proposi- 
tion and it developed a sale for a line I hadn't been 
selling at all — or so nearly not at all as to be insig- 
nificant in results. 

I believe the public in any town will respond to 
just such treatment as this, and that any druggist 
can do what I did with " specialty " soaps. 



119 



CHAPTER XVI 
Who Will Sell the Sundries? 

Who is going to sell all the druggists 1 sundries 
that will be bought in your vicinity this year ? Will 
most of them be bought from you and your local 
competitors, or will they come from mail order 
houses ? 

Are you going to go after this business and make 
every effort to get your share of it, or are you going 
to sit back and complain that people buy from the 
mail order houses just out of pure cussedness and 
that there is no use trying to make them see the 
advantages of buying at home ? I have heard drug- 
gists, before now, proclaim that the local public has 
no appreciation of what the home business men do 
for the community, that they expect you to support 
the town and its institutions with your money while 
they send their money away for such goods as you 
sell. 

It is perfect foolishness to claim that people buy 
by mail just to be mean and contrary. It is a waste 
of time to kick about catalogue competition and to 
tell people they must buy from you because you are 
a local merchant and a taxpayer in the old home 
town. Whatever people ought to do, according to 
your idea of rights, they will persist in doing as 
they please. 

Whether people ought to buy at home or not is 
beside the question. The fact is that they will buy 
where they want to buy — where they think they 

120 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

can buy to the best advantage. That is human 
nature. Do you and your own family never send 
out of town for anything, thinking to buy cheaper 
or to get something you like better than what the 
home merchants offer you ? I don't suppose there 
ever was a merchant who always did all his retail 
buying right in his own town — in spite of all he 
has to say about buying at home. 

It does not much matter what the ethics of the 
situation are. The public will be likely to buy 
mainly from the men who ask most persistently 
and efficiently for their business. The local drug- 
gist or the catalogue house that goes after the trade 
and keeps going will get it in the end. 

The mail order people are after the business in 
sundries and toilet goods and many kinds of medi- 
cines in your territory. They are mailing their cat- 
alogues into your town and if you are asleep on 
this proposition, you may be sure they are working 
while you sleep. When you finally wake up to the 
fact that you are losing most of your trade to out 
of town concerns, you may find it too late to offset 
effectually the well planned campaigns of those cat- 
alogue concerns who have never let up in their 
efforts. It is old advice to fight fire with fire, but 
the man who first gave that advice did not have in 
mind fighting a prairie fire with a tallow candle. 
Get your backfire advertising under way early and 
make it important enough to amount to something. 

Unless you are right after the business all the 
time, many of your best customers will be ordering 

121 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

sundries and other drug store goods out of town 
just because you are not advertisidg the line. If 
you do not keep up a stiff advertising all the while, 
if you wait to advertise seasonable or new goods 
after the demand for them begins, you will miss the 
best business on those goods. 

The time to advertise any line is before people 
are ready to buy and use the goods. You want 
your advertising to help people to decide what to 
buy and where to buy it. It is not effective adver- 
tising merely to run the kind of announcement that 
serves to tell people where they can get a certain 
article they have considered and decided to buy. 

Get your advertising under way ahead of the 
demand and bring in the early business. The first 
business is the best business and it brings the later 
business along after it. 

The only way in which the mail order house offers 
the buyer of your kinds of goods any advantage is 
possibly in the matter of price. Even if it does not 
sell cheaper, it often makes people believe it does, 
because it tells the people its price is low and it 
quotes prices on everything. You have all the 
other advantages, even if your price is a little higher. 
You make immediate delivery without delay. There 
are no transportation charges to be added in buying 
from you. There are no claims against the trans- 
portation company, no adjustments to be made by 
mail, no orders to be written out, no buying 
"unsight and unseen," no chances of loss by break- 
age. You put the goods right into the customers' 

122 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

hands in good order. The catalogue house cannot 
match such service. The service you give is worth 
money and people are willing to pay additional for 
it, but you have to sell them with your advertising. 

Advertising will enable you to overcome differ- 
ences in price by making all your advantages obvi- 
ous. You can show how it is better to buy from 
you because you offer service. You know there 
are other things than first cost to be considered in 
buying. Many people forget this and your adver- 
tising ought to recall it to them. Advertising qual- 
ity and durability and high grade utility helps to 
offset the little price advantages the catalogue may 
offer. Bear on hard on the advantage of buying 
drug store goods from a druggist of known reputa- 
tion who is right on the ground with his personal 
guarantee. Emphasize the advantage of seeing the 
goods before accepting them, and the disadvantages 
of buying from picture. 

You only irritate your public when you advertise 
along this line : 

Buy at Home! 

Who supports local institutions? The home merchant. 
Who pays the taxes that keep up schools and public utilities ? 
The home merchant. Why send your money to catalogue 
houses for cheap goods when you can get good goods from 
us? Why not be patriotic and buy at home? Etc., etc., etc. 

Advertise what you have to sell in goods and 
service and advertise it well. Don't waste your 
advertising space telling people what they ought to 
do — preaching at them. Make them see the advan- 

123 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

tages of buying from you and they will give you 
their business. Tell them what they ought to do 
and what they ought not to do and they will resent 
your free advice and take the position that they are 
independent and can buy where they please. 
Here is a better type of advertisement to use : 

Drug Store Economy. 

There is a good deal to be saved in careful shopping for 
your drug store wants. 

When you want to get the best value for the least money, 
you will find it worth while to come to us and let us show 
you what quality to buy. 

In many kinds of drug store goods several grades are 
available, and we can sell to you as cheaply as any concern, 
but we do not advise buying the cheapest goods in most 
cases. 

The lowest priced hot water bottle, for instance, may 
prove to be the most expensive in the end, if it leaks and 
damages bedding and garments, or if it has to be replaced 
in a little while with another. 

In medicines and toilet specialties, there is no economy in 
cheap goods. You save a little money, perhaps, but you get 
what is of no real value, and in order to get results it is 
necessary to buy the better grade in the end. 

Even where the goods are of standard make, the cheaper 
price may cover old and deteriorated goods or it may involve 
inconvenience or delay in purchase with added cost in some 
other form, as in transportation charges. 

Everything considered, we do not believe you can save as 
much money buying anywhere else as in buying from us. 

Give us a chance to prove what we say. 

Greene's Pharmacy. 

Ask the manufacturers of the lines you sell to 
supply you with advertising matter, folders, book- 

124 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

lets, show cards, window displays, mailing cards. 
You can use such helps with little or no expense, 
and they produce results and help your store to 
profit by the national advertising of the standard 
brands. 

Keep people thinking about your store in connec- 
tion with advertised lines and you will get more of 
the business on those goods. Cease to advertise 
that you have those goods and people will buy 
wherever it happens. 

The mail order house is after the business on 
druggists' sundries and on all the other lines you 
handle. If there was enough prescription business 
to make it worth while, you would probably find 
them competing for that. The fact that all the 
advantages in selling goods to the home public lie 
with you, unless perhaps the price, counts for you, 
but it will not bring you the business unless you go 
after it with advertising. Business in any line goes 
to the people who go after it, whether they are local 
merchants or mail order houses. It is up to you 
whether you get the business in your line this year 
or not. 



125 



CHAPTER XVII 
Making Disinectants Sell 

Every drug store sells more or less disinfectants. 
Usually more than it should expect to sell, consider- 
ing the amount of pushing the line gets ; and less 
than it could sell if the proper attention were 
given it. 

Few lines pay a better profit than disinfectants, 
taken as a whole. Much of the stock is bulk goods, 
and can be sold at a large advance over cost, and 
even the proprietary disinfectants are seldom sold 
at cut rates. 

The disinfectant business is one that is susceptible 
of great development. People are becoming better 
educated in the necessity for the use of such things, 
but the demand may be stimulated immensely yet. 
Most families buy disinfectants only when the need 
for them is obvious. The druggist can, if he will, 
educate many people to buy the goods as preventives 
as well as cures. 

The hot weather of July and August brings about 
a greater sale for disinfectants than there is in the 
colder months, and the cumulative effect of the 
germ breeding conditions makes the latter part of 
August about the most seasonable period for such 
goods. 

Disinfectants as a rule afford the druggist a good 
profit and are very generally used, making them 
good subjects for advertising in season. Of course 
in advertising them the desirable thing is to create 

126 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

the greatest demand for those articles which pay 
best. 

The disinfectants for which the demand is the 
largest are copperas, chloride of lime, Piatt's chlo- 
rides, carbolic acid, mercuric chloride, etc. 

There is a good deal of difference in the cost of 
these things, as they are bought in quantity or in 
lessqr amounts as wanted. It pays to look up the 
stock as the hot weather advances and buy enough 
to get the quantity price where there is an advantage 
of that sort obtainable — and there is one in most 
cases. The time to lay in a stock in any seasonable 
goods is just before the seasons opens, not after it 
is under way. 

[Such of these disinfectants as do not come already 
ill packages ought to be prepared in cartons or bottles 
of a good selling size and labeled with the drug label, 
telling how the goods are to be used and giving any 
precautions necessary in their use.} 

It should be made a particular point to give as 
many and varied uses as possible, not only for the 
cure of bad conditions, but also for their prevention. 
The more ways that people can be induced to use 
an article, the more purposes for which it is availa- 
ble, the more of it they will use and the oftener they 
will have to buy. 

There are many articles in a drug store besides 
the disinfectants that could be made to sell to a 
much greater extent if people were educated up to 
their uses. A campaign of education is a good thing 
to create demand. 

127 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

In the way of proprietary disinfectants and germi- 
cides the houses putting up the goods are ready with 
generous supplies of literature which they are 
anxious to get properly distributed. They will 
furnish abundant printed matter, with the dealer's 
name, if he will agree to place it where it will do 
the most good. It will pay the dealer to take hold 
of this and help distribute the literature. 

By taking advantage of such opportunities to 
secure free advertising matter, and by distributing 
it carefully the dealer can do much to help make his 
store the headquarters for disinfectants, fumigators 
and various other disease preventives. 

The druggist ought to familiarize himself with the 
nature of the spread of contagious and infectious 
diseases so that when any disease of the sort, if it 
is nothing more than " grip," becomes in any degree 
epidemic he will be able to recommend the right pre- 
cautions to customers who want to know what to do, 
and to advertise these recommendations in a way to 
make people feel the need of following them. 

Among the diseases that the druggist should watch 
are diphtheria, typhoid, measles, small-pox, meningi- 
tis, scarlet fever, consumption, whooping cough, etc. 
People are always ready to do anything in reason to 
prevent these diseases from getting into the family, 
and he who goes to them with reliable information 
as to how their spread may be prevented will find 
that his knowledge will bring him good business. 

One of the best means of advertising disease pre- 
ventives is by means of a little booklet containing 

128 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

information regarding each of the diseases mentioned, 
as well as about general disinfectant precautions and 
the danger of the spread of common colds. This 
booklet may well be sent to all the families on the 
druggist's mailing list with a request that they keep 
it for reference. And when any of the diseases 
mentioned becomes prevalent the newspaper adver- 
tising should call attention to the booklets, advising 
people to get them out and study the contents, and 
telling the public that more booklets are on hand for 
any who have lost them, or did not get them before. 

In the case of an epidemic, window bulletins ought 
to be made telling people what they should buy and 
use, and these bulletins kept on display for weeks, 
attention being called to them in the newspaper 
advertising. A little effort in the direction of 
cooperation with the board of health, showing 
them that you know what you are about and are 
qualified to give the right kind of advice, will often 
result in the health officer who inspects a family 
making his own task easier by simply telling them 
that if they will go to Blank, the Druggist, and tell 
him what they want to prevent, he will give them 
the right kind of preventives. 

This kind of work raises the druggist in the appre- 
ciation of the public and gives them a better opinion 
of his professional ability. It also stamps him as 
being public-spirited and interested in anything that 
is for the benefit of the people. 

It is well to push some one preparation that is 
suited to about all disinfecting uses and mention 

129 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

this in all advertising in order to make it familiar to 
people. A scattering mention of a dozen different 
preparations in all advertising confuses people and 
fails to produce the same results that concentration 
gives. 

This article ought to be offered and described upon 
demands for any of the proprietary disinfectants and 
it should be given almost continuously insine the 
store display and frequent window exhibits. It 
should be a good profit producer and one that can 
profitably be recommended in preference to such 
things as chloride of lime and copperas in order to 
make a sale of a " quarter " package instead of five 
cents' worth of something. 

The physicians should be well advertised along 
this line and their cooperation sought industriously. 
Tney can influence all their patients to buy the kind 
of disinfectant they think is right and they should 
be shown absolutely wherein your kind is perfectly 
reliable. 

Letters sent every month to the doctors, each one 
hammering in one point effectively, will help very 
much. The doctor is a busy man and apt to throw 
advertising into the waste basket, but every ingenu- 
ity you possess must be exercised to get up letters 
that will be read. 

Good business in disinfectants is that of public 
boards of one kind or another which have control of 
bublic buildings. Large manufacturing concerns, or 
small ones, should be solicited. You should be pre- 
pared to make them attractive prices on large pack- 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

ages, and you should go after the business in person 
instead of waiting for them to respond to general 
publicity methods. It is worth quite a little indi- 
vidual effort to get such users started on a line of 
goods, for they do not change easily, finding it easier 
to send repeat orders than to investigate new kinds 
of goods. 

Much of the advertising sent out on disinfectants 
is unattractive. It is filled with details that are of 
little importance, giving a volume to the folder or 
booklet that renders it very likely to get read. It 
contains testimonial after testimonial in fine type. 
It obscures the main facts by hiding them in a mass 
of unnecessary matter. 

The druggist ought to begin to advertise disin- 
fectants when the hot weather sets in and sprinkle 
his newspaper ads on that subject through all of 
July, August and September. There is quite an 
advantage in advertising any sort of goods in the 
drug line early and bearing hard on the preventive 
idea. 

If a man can be induced to buy copperas before 
he needs it, so that he will use it as a preventive, he 
will probably keep coming back for more all the 
season at the same place where he bought first. 
After being taught to use it to prevent foul condi- 
tions, he can be easily shown that its continued use 
is needed to continue to prevent those conditions. 
That sort of use will make up for the difference in 
quantity between the amount necessary to prevent 
and the amount necessary to cure the unsanitary 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

condition of things. Every one recognizes the fact 
that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
cure, but it is human nature to put things off till 
the last day, in the afternoon. 

Probably the best way to promote the sale of dis- 
infectants is to issue early a folder telling of the 
dangers of unsanitary arrangements and suggesting 
the need for protection against the hidden disease 
germs that menace the health of the people, who are 
inclined to be careless about such matters. 

The folder should be used freely, mailed to every 
one within reach and enclosed in all packages leav- 
ing the store. A good size is such as will slip into 
a No. 6% envelope, A good title for the first page is 
" Hot Weather Precautions/' 

The title is sufficient for the first page of such an 
ad. 

Inside on the first page, under the heading of 
« Lurking Dangers/' one can tell of the dangers of 
non-disinfection in brief and impressive language, but 
without being repulsive. 

People are naturally a little morbid at the best 
and are always looking for something that says there 
is danger at hand. This should not be an attempt 
to scare the public into buying disinfectants, but an 
effort to make them see that the danger is not 
imaginary, and though real and right at hand in 
nearly every home, can be prevented in the easiest 
possible way and at the expense of probably only a 
few cents. 

The little article can close with a statement of the 

132 



Gettino More Drug Store Business 

certainty which surrounds modern disinfection. 
Page 3 should take up the disinfectants that the 
druggist carries, giving name, price and description 
(in a few words), each one so that even a child could 
be sent to the store for some without a misunder- 
standing arising about the cost or the identity of the 
thing wanted. 

The price and item page can be headed, " Cost of 
Safety/' 

The last page should contain the name of the 
store and its location at the foot of the page, and 
above a catchy headed little ad for some special 
disinfectant preparation that the druggist himself 
prepares under his own label. 

Window displays of disinfectants are easily 
arranged, and disinfectants will not be spoiled by 
the light or by insects. Plenty of cards ought to 
be used to indicate the different articles and their 
prices. 

Herewith is the matter for some good newspaper 
ads for disinfectants : 

ODORLESS DISINFECTANTS 

Many people neglect the use of disinfectants because they 
give out such a disagreeable odor which penetrates to all 
parts of the house. 

Don't risk health for that cause. It is all unnecessary. 
Odorless disinfectants aie just as powerful as the others. 

Don't take any chances with your family's health anyway. 
Think what you are risking ! ! 

As a splendid disinfectant for use in the house, where it is 
desired to avoid any indication of its presence, use Platt's 
Chlorides. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

This preparation has no odor and does not stain fabrics. 
It can be sprinkled about promiscuously or left standing in 
open vessels to absorb impurities from the air. 

For use in the sick room it is unequaled. No household 
can afford to be without it. 

We keep it in a concentrated form, and a bottle large 
enough to make two gallons of a strong solution costs but 50c. 

If you want bulk disinfectants for use in a large way try 
copperas, 5c. lb., 25 lbs for 75c. 

We have all the standard articles in this line, Carbolic 
Acid, Kreso, Creolin, Bichloride, etc. 

Telephone right away if you are in a hurry for anything. 

GOOD DISINFECTING 

There are places in every house and yard that need the 
application of disinfectants from time to time in hot weather. 

You can't afford to neglect this matter. The health of the 
family is at stake. 

No one need leave the premises in unsanitary condition 
for a single day on account of the expense. 

Disinfectants cost but little, either in actual price or in 
value, as compared with their preventive power. 

We sell the best grade of copperas for use in sewers, sinks, 
drain pipes, etc., for 5c. per lb. 

If you want a supply on hand for occasional use every 
week, let us send up a 10 lb. box for 35c. 

Copperas is easy to use. Simply put a lot into a pail of 
water or into a common garden sprinkler and pour it where 
you want it to go. 

The copperas itself can be put right into a drain or similar 
place without the trouble of dissolving it if water will reach 
it where it lies. 

All other disinfectants at prices as low in proportion as 
copperas. 



134 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Making the Soda Fountain Successful 

Folks are fussy about their soda fountain service 
and at the prices we have to ask for that service 
nowadays, they have a right to expect high class 
service. The druggist who neglects his fountain is 
going to find his fountain negleeted by the public. 
Success with soda water demands attention to the 
smaller details as well as to the more important 
essentials. 

There are many little things about operating a 
fountain that the druggist does not think can make 
a great deal of difference to people, but the people 
themselves think differently. If it is fussiness or 
crankiness or a fastidious taste that causes a cus- 
tomer to resent being served an ice cream drink 
with the handle of the spoon wet and sticky, then 
call it that, but see that thereafter the spoon the 
customer is to use is the last thing put into the glass, 
and that it is put in with a dry, clean handle. You 
do not serve finger bowls with your drinks and you 
know how a drop of syrup on two fingers will stick 
and be unpleasant until cleaned off. You don't want 
your customers to leave the fountain trying to lick 
their fingers clean ! 

And there is something else about spoons, too. 
Sometimes one discovers a druggist with an assort- 
ment of soda spoons that look as if they were right 
from the junk pile. They are minus most of their 
plating. They are short handled, long handled and 

135 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

middle size handled. They are bent and twisted. 
They are everything that spoons need not be, because 
it would not eost much to have them plated and the 
straightening would be a matter of a few minutes 
work with a pair of pliers. And those that are too 
short could be eliminated. Just make up your mind 
that the customer is going to notice the spoon. You 
may hand it out without even looking at it, but the 
customer has to eat with it and cannot help noticing 
anything that is wrong with it. Spend a few dollars 
for spoons if your spoon service is not all it should 
be, unless you can make it right without expense. 
Sometimes all that is needed is a little elbow grease 
to polish up the spoons already on hand. 

I mentioned the objection to a wet spoon ; what 
about the glass that is wet on the outside or served 
in a holder with a wet handle ? Your customers do 
not want to get their hands wet or sticky, so see to 
it that you give them no cause for complaint in that 
direction. A woman may spoil a pair of gloves try- 
ing to drink from a slopped over, mussy container. 
And just the person whose trade you want may be 
driven from your store by an improperly served 
•drink. 

Take the matter of straws. It is supposed to be 
a perfectly sanitary proposition to keep the straws 
in a nickel or glass holder on the bar. The top 
keeps out the flies and dust in theory and you may 
believe that if you never look into the bottom of the 
container when it is about empty. But anyway 
when anyone takes a straw out of the bunch, the 

136 



Getting More Dgug Store Business 

fingers paw over the top of more or less other straws, 
the end the customers put in their mouths. There 
are holders from which the straw is taken by its 
middle. There are straws that come in sealed paper 
containers, two in a package. You will do as you 
like about this straw business, but if you are cater- 
ing to a fastidious class of patrons, you will make no 
mistake in giving them straws they know have not 
been handled. 

Everyone knows that the soda bar ought to be 
clean and dry, but not every soda dispenser seems 
to realize the unpleasantness of having the bar wiped 
off under your nose with a dirty cloth when you are 
drinking. Don't wipe around a customer's glass 
and never switch an old cloth or sponge over the 
bar before patrons if you want them to feel happy. 

Another thing, and this is sometimes difficult to 
handle satisfactorily. The customer sitting in front 
of the soda bar often finds his eyes looking right at 
the sloppiest part of the outfit if such is the arrange- 
ment. And how can one feel pleased to sit there 
and drink with the eyes on a pile of dirty dishes, a 
sink full of muddy looking water, a boy washing 
glasses and spoons in that water, a floor strewn with 
used paper napkins, and many other unpleasant and 
unsightly features. Of course all this may be sani- 
tary and as clean as can be, but it looks the reverse 
and it is all calculated to detract from the enjoyment 
of the customer. Unfortunately, many fountains 
have from the outside of the bar a visible portion 
that is really dirty. 

137 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

If your arrangement is such that the outfit looks 
sightly from in front, don't use a little section of end 
bar that lets customers stand where they can look 
behind the scenes. Keep the actually working part 
of the dirty end of the job just as much out of sight 
as possible. It is not enough that the draining board 
and all those under parts are clean. They cannot 
but be mussy part of the time and they are never 
attractive in appearance. 

Soda fountain success is all tied up with the looks 
of the fountain and all of its accessories. People's 
tastes and appetites are more influenced by what 
they see than they themselves realize. 

What is the mirror back of the fountain for but 
to attract people by its looks, by making the appear- 
ance of the place more attractive — and what do 
many druggists do but pile up displays in front of 
the mirror and letter it all over with signs and even 
cover it in summer with mosquito netting because it 
is easier to do that than to wash the glass frequently ? 
A mirror behind the fountain is a real help toward 
the success of the soda business if it is given a 
chance to serve as a mirror instead of a signboard. 

Everything about the fountain ought to be as 
bright and clean and shiny as it can be made, and 
the work on it should be done before business begins 
in the morning That may be pretty early in hot 
weather, but see that somebody gets around early 
enough, even if they are given time off at the other 
end of the day to make up for it. 

No matter how clean and attractive your fountain 

138 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

may be, you cannot sell the goods if you don't have 
them. That means that it is going to prove fatal to 
success to allow yourself to be out of various staple 
flavors at times. Getting out of the things you 
know will be wanted steadily all the time is due to 
carelessness. There is no excuse for not watching 
the stock so as to avoid running low on such things 
as chocolate in some form, or on vanilla or straw- 
berry or other standard flavors, or on ice cream. 
You may think you cannot foresee what the weather 
will be and just what the demand is going to be, but 
you can come so close to it that you will very rarely 
have to admit that you are out of anything — if you 
will make it your care to think of this and look ahead 
and even study the weather predictions. 

If you take pains to do the little things that add 
to your patrons' comfort, you will encourage them 
to come to your fountain habitually. If you offer 
them paper napkins when there is a chance of their 
wanting them ; if you hand the smoker a couple of 
matches as he leaves the fountain, getting out a 
cigar or cigarette as he starts ; if you set out a glass 
of plain water habitually along with an ice cream 
dish ; if you avoid acting rushed and hurried and 
disinclined to take time to let the uncertain customer 
discuss the different flavors, etc., all these things 
will help make contented patrons who will like to 
patronize you. 

If you insist upon customers buying checks from 
the cashier before being served, try to make it easy 
for them to understand this and see that the clerks 

139 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

are not snappy with people who come up and ask 
for drinks before getting their checks. 

Different stores handle this matter in different 
ways, making it hard for a stranger to know just 
what to do where there are no signs to indicate. 
Get the cash in the way that seems best to you, but 
see that no customer is treated with any lack of 
courtesy. Don't permit a soda clerk to meet a 
request for a soda with a curt, " Get a check." 
Better than obliging customers to secure their check 
in advance, it always seems to me, is the plan of 
giving them a check when serving them. 

A soda fountain cannot be operated with success 
unless the ice cream end of the proposition is well 
handled. The ice cream is the main factor today in 
fountain success. Don't skimp on the cost of this 
product in order to make more money. Sell the 
best ice cream you can handle at a profit. Take the 
best care of it you can. Don't re-freeze icicles into 
it. Better waste half a freezer than to sell it in poor 
condition. And don't re-freeze it repeatedly and 
take a chance of poisoning your patrons. One cus- 
tomer made sick might cost you your whole business 
for a season. I knew of a druggist who lost his 
season's business because he did not watch his car- 
bonating tanks and in one of them the lining wore 
through. Patrons once bit are always shy. 

Don't allow the serving of mushy ice cream . When 
it begins to soften, get somebody on the job icing it 
up. If you can't depend on the clerks to watch the 
ice, do it yourself. Look at it often. 

140 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

The lack of ice at a soda fountain is fatal to the 
success of the business. Everything must be cold, 
cold syrups, cold carbonated water, cold milk, cold 
plain water, cold glasses. To save a dollar a week 
on ice might mean to lose fifty dollars worth of busi- 
ness. If the ice man is a little uncertain, figure 
ahead on your ice. Have a box for an extra cake or 
two. Ice is the most important part of your stock 
in hot weather. 

The appearance of the soda clerk has a lot to do 
with securing a desirable business of the best class. 
Some clerks seem to get themselves mussed up and 
sloppy from head to foot before they have been at 
the fountain an hour. Others keep pretty neat all 
day. Well, whatever it costs for clean jackets, see 
that they always wear them. If you cannot afford 
to keep your dispensers in clean jackets, increase 
your prices enough to pay the extra laundry bill and 
the results will justify the cost. You cannot make 
a success of the fountain with untidy attendants. 

A good soda fountain and good products of that 
fountain, will have a strong appeal to the school 
children, especially if you have enough room to use 
tables where the boys and girls can take a little time 
and be comfortable. A mere soda bar where people 
must stand and drink will not make a great appeal 
to those patrons. The girls in particular want to 
sit down and visit, and people will spend more money 
and buy the more expensive things on the menu if 
they can take their time to it. You can get tables 
and chairs and stools of such patterns as to give a 

141 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

maximum of accommodation in a minimum of 
space. 

The students like a bright, attractive place. You 
cannot expect to develop their trade with a dark, 
semi-gloomy, cheerless outfit. Have lots of light, 
night or day, cheerful attendants and clerks, and if 
possible, use phonograph or other music during the 
after-school time when the students make it their 
habit to come around. You will find that the hours 
of the greatest school trade will not be the hours 
when other trade is the heaviest. On that account 
you can give the school trade better service and more 
special attention. 

See that your store is comfortable, warm enough 
in winter and cool enough in summer. A chilly, 
dismal store is no place to develop the sale of eats 
of the ice cream type. A chilly atmosphere deadens 
the spirits of the patrons of any shop. Make them 
physically comfortable and mentally cheerful and 
they will spend their money a great deal faster. 

If you use a phonograph, pick out the lively band 
or orchestra pieces. Give your patrons something 
that will set them beating time with their toes. 
That is the kind of music to help youngsters to 
spend their money. Omit the grand opera selec- 
tions and the vaudeville and monolog numbers. 

Make the children, especially the high school boys 
and girls, feel at home in your store, but see that 
they observe the proprieties. Don't let them get 
rough and don't countenance any undue familiarities 
between the boys and girls. Maintain a high class 

142 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

reputation so parents will be willing to have their 
children come there. Employ no clerks who will 
fail of courtesy or respect to the girls, even when 
the girls themselves are of the forward kind, inclined 
to hang around and flirt. 

Allow no profanity on the part of help or patrons 
and don't allow boys to loaf there and make them- 
selves a nuisance. There is a difference between 
the idle, loafing sort and the schoolboy with a little 
spare time on his hands. 

Give the school trade as generous portions as you 
can. It is worth something to have a reputation for 
being generous. Take pains with the wants of the 
little folks who are too new at ordering to be able 
to speak right up for themselves. These littlest 
customers soon get older and then they know where 
they have been treated well. 

It will pay you to capitalize the school spirit, 
decorating a little with the school colors on the 
return after vacation time, or in the event of some 
school festival or athletic celebration. 

Get up fountain specials which you name after 
the school's athletic captains or winners. Put up 
pictures of the school football and baseball teams on 
occasion, keeping up a frequent change in such 
decorations. It will not be a bad idea to have a 
school bulletin board on which the students can post 
notices of meetings, advertisements of games, etc. 
Anything you do in such ways to affiliate yourself 
with the school interest helps to make your store the 
school drug store, the one the students favor and 

143 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

patronize most largely. Giving window or interior 
space to the display of school publicity is a very 
different thing from letting some theatrical com- 
pany use your display space in a way that brings no 
return to you. 

soda straws 

Act as if you considered it a privilege to make 
over a drink when the patron does not appear to 
like it. 

The soda clerk who looks out of the window while 
taking the patron's order does not make any hit with 
the trade. 

A soda clerk standing outside in the doorway is a 
living advertisement of the fact that you are having 
no business. 

If you have the idea that any cheap boy can sling 
soda water well enough, you have something yet to 
learn about the business. The soda fountain calls 
for the best kind of help. 

Don't let the customer catch you putting back in 
the box the cracker the customer left on the counter. 

It doesn't add a cent to the cost of operating the 
fountain to pass out plenty of hearty " Thank 
•you's." 

Employ soda clerks with enough backbone to stand 
and not lean on the back bar. 

Snatch up the dirty dishes the minute they are 
left. Nobody wants to sit down in front of them. 

Disorder on the back bar may not be accompanied 
by dirt, but pretty nearly every woman will asso- 
ciate the two. 

144 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Don't move a finger to advertize or to boost your 
fountain until you know you are drawing good soda 
and selling good ice cream. 

When you spill too much of something into a 
drink, make that drink over again. It will be 
cheaper than to displease a patron. 

Handling a clean glass or cup by the rim, or a 
spoon by the wrong end is going to be noticed by 
some fastidious person who will try another fountain 
next time. 

Study the individual tastes of individuals if you 
want to get them into the habit of patronizing your 
fountain. 

Just because a visitor wants a drink of plain water 
without spending any money, don't act as if you 
were being robbed. 

Don't go off and leave patrons at the bar, even 
after serving them. Stay where you can anticipate 
any further wants and accept further orders. 

Don't be afraid to treat a customer to a drink now 
and then. A dime saved in that way looks as big as 
a dollar to some folks. 

The white jacket of the soda dispenser looks 
about a hundred per cent better when neatly and 
snugly buttoned than when open and flying 
loosely. 

Pay strict attention to the customer you are serv- 
ing, no matter what friend is trying to talk to you 
at the same time. Business before pleasure. 

Ask your friends to tell you of the defects in the 
service and flavors at your fountain. Don't depend 

145 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

on your own personal taste. It may not match that 
of the average patron. 

Don't monkey with cheap fruit juices and crushed 
fruits unless you are after the cheap class of trade. 

The success of your fountain business depends 
upon your success in pleasing your patrons, so take 
endless pains to satisfy the tastes of the fastidious, 
the peculiar and the whimsical. 



146 



CHAPTER XIX 
Helping the Christmas Sales 

Trade comes easier during the holiday season 
and for that reason many merchants do not increase 
their efforts in proportion to the possible increase 
in business. But there is no time when extra effort 
will produce as large returns as at this time, and 
because business would be good anyway is no reason 
for not doing everything possible to make it better 
yet. 

Do all you can to make conditions in your store 
favorable, to make people feel like buying. You 
may do a good business without going much out of 
your way to get it at this season, but you do it in 
spite of the conditions rather than on account of 
them. 

To begin with, have your store comfortable 
Keep it warm enough and not too hot. Have a 
place where people can go and get warm when they 
come in on a very cold day. This is especially 
important where the farming trade is a big factor. 
A store with a big hot air register or a good stove 
will be favored by country people coming in from a 
cold drive, when a store that is warm enough all 
over with no convenient source of heat, will be 
neglected. It is, of course, important to have the 
store comfortable and well ventilated on account of 
the better work the selling force can do under such 
conditions. 

Make it a part of your service to help people to 

147 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

prepare any parcels for shipment by mail or express. 
Advertise that you will gladly help pack Christmas 
presents for shipment. Have a table convenient 
where such work can be done without interfering 
with other business. Keep plenty of large sheets 
of heavy paper there, and twine and Christmas seals 
and "Don't open until Christmas" pasters, and 
don't think it necessary to make a charge for this 
kind of help or for the material used. If people 
bring in articles bought elsewhere and ask you to 
help wrap them, do it cheerfully. This is a kind of 
service people want and appreciate and it will help 
business. 

More than at any other time is it worth while to 
make it possible for customers to sell themselves. 
This means putting price cards everywhere and 
leaving all goods of suitable sorts where people can 
examine them and find out what they want to know 
about quality and cost. Thus, when all the sales- 
people are busy a customer is less likely to go out 
without finding out what he wanted to know, with- 
out buying the thing he wants. Don't get the erro- 
neous idea that people do not like to buy for gifts 
goods that have been exhibited with prices on them. 
This may go in a limited number of very exclusive 
shops catering to millionaires only, but in your store 
there is nothing to it. Your customers are not going 
to buy without knowing what the goods cost, and if 
you show a window full of price-marked goods, peo- 
ple are going to come in and buy when otherwise 
they would be afraid to chance coming in to ask 

148 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

the price. This applies to more folks than you 
would think. 

Spend a few dollars in wages for a boy to open 
the door for customers and to make himself useful 
around the front of the store, helping people to get 
started with their bundles, helping them to get their 
parcels loaded into wagons or cars, ready to run out 
with a farmer's packages when he drives up for 
them. Borrow a coat and cap with brass buttons 
and braid for the boy to wear and give your store a 
metropolitan atmosphere. The more unused your 
people are to such things, the better the advertise- 
ment. 

Advertise that purchases for gifts may be left 
with you for delivery at any time. Assume respon- 
sibility for the safe delivery of any Christmas gift 
to any place in town, or to the express company or 
the post office for shipment to any out of town 
address. The delivery of gifts is a burdensome part 
of giving and when people can be relieved of that 
feature of the work, they will appreciate it and pat- 
ronize the store that helps them. Of course, all 
stores do this sort of thing, but very few make as 
much capital of it as they might. A circular letter 
sent to a good list of possible customers, detailing 
all the kinds of holiday service you are prepared to 
render will result in many sales that otherwise 
would have gone elsewhere. 

There are few stores where holiday shopping will 
not be helped and the people kept in a better buying 
mood by music. There is no great expense attached 

149 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

nowadays to having continuous music in a store 
because good phonographs of many makes are avail- 
able and records are cheap. There may be a few 
fussy people who do not care for music of the sort 
under such conditions, but such people are few and 
far between, and they are not liberal buyers any- 
way. Give me the people who will like the music 
and anybody who likes can have the other folks. 
On days when business is dull and there are not 
many customers, the music helps take off the lone- 
some effect of the empty store. It makes what 
customers there are feel that there is something 
going on. The "Nobody home" atmosphere in a 
store in holiday season is almost as fatal as it is in 
a theatre. 

I don't know how brightly you light your store 
at ordinary times, but at holiday times, you can 
scarcely have too much light and you cannot afford 
a dimly-lighted stock. This applies during the day 
as well as at night. Use plenty of artificial light 
whenever you need it to make the store look its 
very best. The store that is a bright spot on the 
street will attract more attention during the dark 
hours, and it must be bright inside as well as in the 
windows. Make the store conspicuous by its bril- 
liancy and nobody will go along the street without 
seeing it and being tempted to come in. 

If the weather is suitable, keep the front door 
wide open. The open door will actually cause peo- 
ple to come in as they slowly inspect the windows 
and inside displays from the street. If your store 

150 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

is on the sidewalk level and the door open, it will 
mean a large percentage more visitors. At all 
events you can have a door that opens easily instead 
of one that has to be pushed or pulled with force 
when it is moved. Don't have an automatic closing 
device on it so strong that it pushes people out into 
the street, or slaps them in the face as they try to 
get in. People like things made easy for them in 
connection with Christmas shopping. 

Don't be afraid to slash into some prices during 
the last days. While price-cutting is generally 
deplorable, there are goods in your holiday stock 
that will, after Christmas, have about the selling 
value of a last year's birds' nest. Don't delude 
yourself with the idea that you will be able to work 
off a good deal of the left-over stuff for New 
Year's presents. "There ain't no such animal." 
Get rid of the goods bought for holiday sale before 
Christmas. Better take less than cost than carry 
them a year to get cost and do it with hard work at 
that. 

No matter how much you hate to see children 
paw over your goods under ordinary circumstances, 
you cannot afford to act peevish about it during the 
holiday season. Of course, this does not mean that 
you need to allow goods to be depreciated in this 
way, but it is just as easy to stop such things cheer- 
fully as it is to do it in a way that makes the child 
and probably his parents feel a little disgruntled. 
Even when the children are alone, they will go 
home and tell what happens in the store. We all 

I5i 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

feel a warm spot for anybody who has been nice to 
our youngsters. 

I sometimes think that a good many merchants 
regard only the commercial aspect of the holiday 
trade, and because of this lose business. It is 
important that the store which is to secure a large 
share of Christmas trade get into the Christmas 
spirit. The store force should recognize the fact 
that this spirit is a part of the December work and 
everything possible should be done to make people 
feel like Christmas when they come in. You have 
heard people say in your store just before Christ- 
mas, " I've got to get some presents but I don't 
seem to feel that Christmas is coming so soon." 
Do everything you can to make them feel when 
they enter your store, that Christmas is coming and 
coming soon. Use all kinds of suitable decorations 
and displays, appropriate trimmings, special show 
cards and price tags, everything in the Christmas 
style. Give staple goods a Christmas look with 
holly decorations and special wrappings and holly 
tags. Get as far away from the ordinary, every day 
look of the store as you can. 

When people come into a store where the Christ- 
mas spirit is rampant, they begin to think Christmas 
and feel Christmas. When they merely look in they 
are led to think of things they want to give for 
Christmas, or of the things they would like to 
receive. The influence of the Christmas store is 
very marked on the public. The bigger the store, 
of course, the bigger its influence in a general way. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

In trying to interest people in buying Christmas 
presents, bear in mind the fact that you are adver- 
tising to people who do not use the goods they are 
to buy. That is, you advertise men's goods to 
women at Christmas time. You advertise women's 
wants to man. This is one phase of holiday adver- 
tising that must be borne in mind. Another phase 
is one that is sometimes forgotten, that is the cre- 
ating of a want for goods in the minds of people 
who may let others know of the want. In other 
words, there is a phase of this advertising which 
consists in making people want the holiday things 
for themselves in order that you may profit by 
somebody else finding out the want and buying to 
meet it. 

The success of your store in handling holiday 
lines is not dependent upon your devising brand 
new plans for selling or displaying. It depends 
upon your carrying out enthusiastically the plans 
you have. If you will carry out just as far as you 
can with the enthusiastic help of your employes the 
suggestions I have made right in this article, you 
can develop more holiday trade than you had last 
year, and the harder you work at making the sea- 
son's business a success, the more successful it will 
be. It is just a matter of effort. The public is in 
December in a frame of mind to respond to your 
efforts generously. 



153 



CHAPTER XX 
Christmas Sales from Regular Stock 

Some druggists load up with a great lot of miscel- 
laneous stuff called " Holiday Goods " and endeavor 
to capitalize Christmas in that way. Others put in 
no holiday stuff and let the season go by without 
any effort to make more business by reason of it. 

I have nothing to say against the taking on of a 
line of holiday goods. Within reason, it is a good 
way to increase December sales and profits and keep 
the force busy during a month when people's atten- 
tion turns from the bare necessities to the more 
seasonable things. A good holiday line, carefully 
bought and well handled and closed out by Decem- 
ber 25, is a good investment, but be sure that it is 
sold out, or practically so, or the profits on the 
whole deal will be left tied up in unsalable stuff. 

What I want to urge right now is the pushing of 
the regular stock for Christmas gift purposes. Every 
druggist has in stock more or less goods that can be 
sold for Christmas presents if he will make the 
effort so to sell them. They come within the list 
' of useful gifts, and useful gifts always sell well. 

In getting ready to go after such business, one of 
the first things is to get a supply of holly decorated 
empty boxes of various suitable sizes, and perhaps 
a roll of holly wrapping paper. With these a 
Christmasy look can be given to almost anything. 

One of the last things the druggist thinks of as 
adapted to Christmas selling is a chamois skin. In 

154 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

fact, few druggists give chamois skins the push they 
ought to give them the year round. Have you, for 
example, ever laid a kip of large size skins on the 
counter where people could examine them, and 
called every woman customer's attention to them ? 

A chamois skin is an attractive piece of merchan- 
dise. It has a nice look and a good feel. A woman 
will pick one up and exhibit a good deal of interest 
in it if she happens along where the goods are 
shown. If the skin is a big, high grade one, it will 
attract attention and interest by its size. Most 
people are familiar only with small chamois skins, 
cheaper ones. 

Well, lay out a pile of fine, big skins. Whenever 
any one notices them, exercise a little salesmanship. 
Say, " One of those would make a dandy Christmas 
gift for somebody. When people buy them, they 
generally buy smaller ones to save money. But 
they like the big ones, and any housekeeper will be 
pleased to get one. Notice how soft it is ; no hard 
spots ; same thickness all over ; no thin spots to 
wear through. A nice big chamois makes window 
cleaning the easiest kind of work. Nothing better 
for wiping up dust from furniture ; absolutely neces- 
sary around an automobile. " The druggist, while 
he is talking, folds up a skin neatly and pulls out a 
holly box and puts the skin into it and remarks, 
" You see what a nice looking present one makes all 
put up in a gift box. We don't charge for the box ; 
#1.85 for a chamois of this size." 

There's a little selling display and talk that will 

155 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

make sales ; Christmas sales at Christmas time ; 
ordinary sales at another time. By that method 
you can sell more chamois skins the year around. 

You will find that a sponge sale can often be added 
to the chamois sale. You perhaps would not bring 
out sponges for Christmas gifts in the first place, 
but when you sell the chamois, bring out that box 
you will keep near by with a fine, well shaped sheep's 
wool sponge in it. This is a box that will hold the 
sponge and a chamois placed on top of it. Try for 
the combination sale. Have one box with a bleached 
sponge and one with an unbleached sponge and show 
them side by side. Of course, it will pay to put a 
display of boxed sponges and chamois in the win- 
dow, with a big card explaining the quality and value 
and household uses. 

You have always had some hair brushes in fancy 
boxes for the holiday trade, but often the quality of 
the boxes surpassed that of the skimpy brushes, 
made to sell rather than to use. Whether you go into 
the fancy toilet cases or not, you can sell ordinary 
hair brushes and other brushes for Christmas gifts. 

Make a window display of good quality brushes 
•of all prices. Display them on a background of 
contrasting color and polish the backs to make them 
look their best. Place a few boxes in the window 
and a big card that shall read, u Fine hair brushes 
for holiday gifts. The value is in the brush, not 
the box. Each brush boxed free. ,, Put price tags 
on every brush, preferably with a word of descrip- 
tion of the grade and quality. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

You will probably want to show combs at the 
same time, and match up some combs and brushes 
for the display. When any one comes in and talks 
brush, you will, of course, as you would at any time 
of year, mention a comb as a possible additional 
need. 

But hair brushes are only one sort of brush . Show 
other brushes for Christmas trade — hand brushes, 
nail brushes, tooth brushes, infants' hair brushes, 
clothes brushes, etc. Make up a brush window 
display, showing all kinds of brushes, each kind in 
a suitable holly box ; also boxes containing assort- 
ments of different sorts of brushes. Advertise 
brushes as u Useful Christmas Gifts — Brushes 
Everybody Wants." 

You can make almost anything look like holiday 
goods by displaying it in a setting of Christmas 
greens and red bells. 

Haven't you before now sold a good many hot 
water bottles for gifts ? Of course you have. Every 
Christmas people come in and get them to give to 
friends who haven't too much money, but have ill- 
ness in the family. 

Well, cash in on that prospective demand and 

increase it as much as you are able. Display hot 

water bottles in a holiday setting, in holly boxes, 

with a card that may read something like this : 

Have You a Friend 

Who Would Appreciate One of These ? 

Small ones for the face 

Middle sized ones for baby 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

Large ones for feet or back 
Priced from $i to $3 
Each packed in a handsome holly box 

Hot water bottles nowadays come in attractive 
colors and are handsomely finished. They are good 
looking goods. They sell well for gifts if you remind 
people of them. 

In poorer families, many of the necessities of the 
time are bought because they are needed and are 
added to the Christmas of the family in order to 
make more of a showing on Christmas morning. 
Many things are given in the family that would not 
be given outside. One of the possible gifts of this 
sort is soap. 

You can make a display of handsomely wrapped 
and boxed soaps that will result in holiday sales. 
You have no goods in the store more attractive than 
your best toilet soaps. They class almost with per- 
fumes as holiday goods. See what you can do by 
displays, in the window and otherwise, to get people 
to make their soap purchases for the season from 
you as holiday gifts. 

This is where one of the druggist's best regular 
' lines is also essentially a holiday line in December. 

You will probably find, if you have not noticed it 
before, that most of the perfumes for Christmas are 
bought by men to be given to women. This means 
that the perfume sales will be mainly in the last 
three or four days before Christmas, for men do 
their buying late, except for occasional things of 
importance that must be selected early. It means, 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

too, that the goods are easy to sell, because men 
come in and buy quickly and are amenable to your 
suggestion and persuasion. This is good and profit- 
able business. 

Make your window display of this line four or five 
days before Christmas, and put prices on everything. 
Make it an appeal to men instead of to women, as- 
the perfume display would be at another season. 
Show the men what to buy in order to get a stylish 
perfume for a friend. 

Suggest on a show card that the man put it up to 
you to advise him what perfume to buy. Tell him 
that you know what will please. Guarantee satis- 
faction, allowing the exchange of perfume if the 
bottle has not been opened. 

Give the man the information he needs as to what 
odors are up to date. Don't load him up with white 
rose and jockey club just because you can. You 
want to please his friend, because it may mean a 
repeat purchase from the recipient of the gift. You 
will get your name on the bottle somewhere, if only 
on the bottom by a neat paster made for that purpose. 

Get up a form letter to mail out to your mailing 
list of men, calling their attention to the fact that 
you have an up to date line of the best perfumes in 
packages selling for all prices. Offer to pack up 
the purchase so it can be mailed, or agree to make 
delivery anywhere in town at any stipulated hour, 
There is a big opportunity in this perfume trade^ 
and you can land a big business in the goods on the 
22nd, 23rd, 24th, if you go after it. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

In considering the perfume trade, don't neglect 
sachets. This is something that sells earlier. Sachet 
powder in bulk or in any form for use in fancy work 
for Christmas sells early. It is about the first sign 
of the coming of Christmas, and you must advertise 
it as soon as you can. Don't be afraid of the ten 
cent trade along this line. Encourage the people 
who want a dime's worth of sachet powder in bulk 
to come to you . You want their business, not so 
much for that dime as for the purpose of making 
them regular customers of your store. 

This is where you help the women to buy some- 
thing that is all right for the men. Advertising and 
window display will make the sales. Women pay 
more attention to both of these than men do. 

Don't hesitate to claim for yourself a perfect 
knowledge of what is what in razors and shaving 
materials. You do know and you are going to give 
your women customers honest, umbiased advice. 
You want their men to have just the right razor and 
just the right equipment. 

You have in stock fine goods of this sort, includ- 
ing some handsome packages with gold finished 
safety razors in them. You can please a woman 
who is looking for something expensive. See that 
the buyer of a razor has a chance to buy shaving 
cream or soap and whatever goes with the shave. 
Advertise a sale of shaving creams, etc., to bring 
business from women who are interested in fitting 
up hubby with what may be lacking in his shaving 
kit — razor blades, soap, lather brush, witch hazel, etc. 

1 60 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

In making such sales you have also an opportunity 
to suggest and sell military hair brushes and other 
brushes, anything, in fact, that goes with a man's 
toilet equipment. 

Both of these items are regular stock in practically 
all drug stores, and, of course, sell more at Christ- 
mas time, and in many instances are made much of. 
They are both late sellers. Candy sells late because 
people want to buy it "fresh " and because it is not 
the main present given to an intimate friend, but a 
last edition to the gifts already bought. And it 
sells late because, for the most part, it is bought by 
men. Make the candy display a feature of the last 
week and get up the most elaborate window and 
inside displays you can. This is a line that repays 
well making a very attractive display. A big dis- 
play makes it look as if your store is headquarters 
for fine candy. It shows you are specializing on 
the goods and it brings you out of the class of stores 
merely using candy as a side line. 

Show handsome packages of all sizes and give 
the public a wide range of price choice, putting 
prices on the packages in the window and in the 
inside display. Don't make it necessary for any- 
one to ask, "How much is that?" The candy 
trade of the last December days is a fast trade. 
Men rush in and if your candy is well displayed, 
they say, " Give me that and that and that and wrap 
'em up separately." You make big sales quickly. 
If you feature bulk candy, have some boxes of vari- 
ous sized already put up with the popular combina- 

161 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

tions of mixture. Men don't want to wait. Help 
them to make it snappy. The men will be your 
best candy buyers and you can get a lot of their 
money that way. 

As for cigars, both men and women buy them. 
The women will buy them with a good deal of dis- 
cussion and it is up to you to help them to get 
cigars that will give satisfaction and prevent there 
being anything to the joke about Christmas cigars 
when they come from your store. 

If possible find out what the man's tastes are who 
is to receive the cigars. Talk the matter over and 
then offer the cigar you feel sure will give satisfac- 
tion, and you will have to offer to allow the return 
of the smokes if some other brand is preferred. 

Caution the purchaser against breaking the box 
open and particularly against dropping it, as that 
might spoil part of the contents and make it unsatis- 
factory to have them returned for exchange. There 
will be instances where you can agree to find out 
what brands of cigars the man smokes, because you 
know him or his friends or his club. Be willing to 
take the trouble necessary to give satisfaction. You 
will make a pleased customer — perhaps two of them. 

There are many other things in your staple stock 
that may be worked into the holiday field. Among 
these are talcum powders, especially those suited 
for the baby's toilet. There are spices which might 
be put up in assortments of four-ounce tins. Speed 
up the sale of anything you think might be used for 
gift purposes. 

162 



CHAPTER XXI 
The Telephone as a Sales Aid 

Did you ever call up a fellow business man on 
the telephone, expecting to give him a friendly tip, 
or even to buy something from him, or merely to 
extend some business courtesy, only to receive such 
sharp, snapped-off replies that you backed out as 
quickly as you could without doing what you had 
expected to do ? 

If you were about to make a purchase — perhaps 
you did make it, but it was with the feeling that 
you wished you had either gone in person or else 
tried some other store — it is a safe bet that you 
stopped short of buying as much or of doing as 
great a favor as you planned before telephoning. 

The cold-blooded, mechanical kind of treatment 
you get by telephone from some stores and from 
some people certainly does not incline you to go 
out of your way to do them favors or to give them 
business. If you get unpleasant telephone treat- 
ment at one store while another store treats you as 
you like to be treated, it requires only one guess to 
tell where you are going to buy next time. 

I don't suppose the employes in any store are 
impolite over the telephone intentionally any more 
than they would be impolite in person to a cus- 
tomer, but what does that have to do with it ? If I 
am rudely treated when I call up a store on the 
'phone, I have no way of knowing that the rudeness 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

is unintentional, that they mean to be nice to me 
but don't know how. 

If the clerks (or even the proprietors) are so care- 
less and thoughtless as not to know what politeness 
over the telephone is, am I supposed to be possessed 
of second-sight to know that and therefore to excuse 
them ? No indeed ! I have to take the telephone 
service I get at its face value, and the store suffers 
accordingly. 

Talking over the telephone and talking face to 
face are two different things, and only when a man 
realizes this and acts accordingly will he get a good 
telephone manner. Of course, some druggists may 
not care how they treat people by telephone, just 
as some seem not to care how they treat their cus- 
tomers personally, but those are few, and I have 
nothing to say to them, because it would be a waste 
of time 

A man who is so thick-skinned that he does not 
notice or mind rudeness from others will sometimes 
be rude himself and does not realize it. He will 
not be able to understand the sensitiveness of folks 
who want courteous treatment and who will not 
come back to the store that gives him anything else. 

There are conditions in a personal conversation 
that makes it possible to speak as one cannot over 
the telephone. The facial expression, the smile or 
the gesture that accompany a sharp remark often 
take away the sting and perhaps make it agreeable. 
These things are lacking over the telephone. All 
we get is just exactly what the other fellow says, 

164 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

his mere words, unaccompanied by anything to 
soften the harshness. It is a good deal like letter- 
writing in the necessity for avoiding attempts to be 
funny when they may be misunderstood. 

Some people have unpleasant voices, or they 
habitually speak in a quick, abrupt way. It is nat- 
ural with them and means nothing. People who 
know them well may think nothing of it when talk- 
ing with them in person, but even those familiar 
with their manner will feel an unconscious resent- 
ment when they meet it in telephoning. 

I don't care whether your abruptness is due to a 
grouch, to nervousness or to carelessness, it will 
hurt your business. People will not really like to 
meet with it when they come into the store, though 
they may put up with it, but they will not stand it 
over the telephone — not if there is another drug- 
gist at hand who knows how to use the 'phone 
properly. 

There are some druggists who seem to be in a 
tremendous hurry as soon as they get to the tele- 
phone. Not that there is any reason for it. Appar- 
ently, they have time enough, and you might see 
them directly afterward sitting back, taking it easy 
with their feet up on the prescription desk. Their 
telephone hurry is just a matter of habit. These 
same druggists will give a patron all the time wanted 
for making a personal purchase over the counter, 
and they never act hurried when you go into the 
store to see them. Their hurried manner is just a 
nervous habit. They may have a right to be nerv- 

165 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ous, but they are foolish to allow it to interfere with 
their service. 

This nervous haste makes it difficult for the cus- 
tomer to get any information by telephone. The 
druggist answers in monosyllables. If he is asked 
a question he can not answer readily, he says "I 
don't know," and then he stops and leaves it to the 
customer to start things going again. He seems 
to be anxious to hang up the receiver and get away. 
All he really seems to care about, and he doesn't 
show that any too much, is an absolute order. 

I hate to do business over the telephone or any 
other way with a man who acts as if I were keeping 
him from making his train. I can not get satisfac- 
tory treatment from him. He may get my money 
once, but never again ! 

Don't you know men — business men, too — who 
seem to think they can say things over the tele- 
phone that they wouldn't dare to say to your face ? 
They feel safer at a distance, I suppose. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the telephone does not give anybody a 
license to be rude. It ought to encourage courtesy, 
because to get the same impression across by tele- 
phone you have to use more tact and more polite- 
ness than would be necessary in person. 

If you are not getting the telephone business of 
your regular customers, if folks seem to avoid tele- 
phoning orders to you, sit down and consider, and 
then take notice of how you and your clerks handle 
your next few telephone calls. See whether it is 
the store telephone or the customer's telephone 

166 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

that is always hung up first, whether you make the 
customer do all the talking or whether you act like 
a salesman trying to please and persuade the possi- 
ble purchaser. 

Your telephone mistakes ought to be easy to cor- 
rect. The only thing necessary is to try to correct 
them. 

People will call up almost any druggist to turn in 
a simple order, but when it comes to calling up to 
find out about something before buying, or when, 
perhaps, there is no certainty of making the pur- 
chase, that is a different matter. People who are 
accustomed enough to shopping in the store and to 
asking to see things they have not yet decided to 
buy will hesitate to do any such shopping by tele- 
phone — in some drug stores. 

Haven't you heard your wife say she would not 
call up a certain grocer or a certain dry goods store 
where she often buys in person, just because she 
does not like their telephone manner? Haven't 
you seen some member of your family hesitate 
before calling up a store, pause and think over what 
she wanted to say, because she knew she could not 
think of it all as she went along when she found 
herself with some merchant at the other end of the 
wire demanding to know what she wanted ? 

Well customers may feel that way in telephoning 
to you. Next time a woman calls up the store, just 
imagine that she is feeling she must be sure and 
remember all she wanted to say because she thinks 
of you as being in a hurry to ring off. Then make 

167 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

it apparent that you are in no hurry. Encourage 
her to think of all the things she wanted to say. 
You will find she will buy more in the end. There 
is such a thing as salesmanship over the telephone, 
although to hear some merchants (I won't say drug- 
gists) answer their calls, you would not think it. 

The druggist who gives his patrons agreeable, 
unhurried telephone responses makes them want to 
call him up again. He turns them away feeling 
that the telephone is a great convenience, and ready 
to recommend his wire service to their friends. It 
is better advertising than you can buy with money 
if you have patrons who, when they hear acquaint- 
ances complaining of the telephone service of other 
stores, take pains to say that your store knows how 
to treat people by telephone. 

There are some lines of goods in your store that 
people cannot and will not buy off-hand. They 
must know something about them before they 
order. If you make it possible for them to find out 
about the goods by telephone, you increase your 
chances of sales in that field because you make it 
easy for shut-ins and for people at a distance to 
order intelligently. You cannot get this class of 
business merely by knowing how to answer the tele- 
phone with " Hello, this is Brown's," and "Thank 
you," (or possibly a shorter u 'k you" when an 
order is taken. 

There are plenty of people who are not as much 
at home in using the telephone as you are, and they 
find it difficult to understand you. If you act peev- 

168 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

ish because they do not catch your meaning at first, 
they are sure to become embarrassed and you don't 
get their business. On the other hand, if you take 
pains to make them feel that you are not in a hurry 
and if you see that they fully understand you, they 
are comfortable about it and you do get their busi- 
ness, that time and other times. 

People who do not hear you at first will hate to 
ask again and again and often they will pretend to 
understand when they really do not. No matter 
what the cause of the failure to understand you, 
whether it be deafness, lack of experience, a noisy 
wire, or outside noises, see that your message gets 
across before you go on or give it up. 

You know how a railroad employe sometimes 
gives you information about trains. So fast and so 
much of it that you don't know what he said, and 
he turns away with such an air of finality after tell- 
ing you, that you go on without knowing, rather 
than ask his royal highness to say it again and say 
it slowly. There are drug stores, I regret to say, 
where telephone calls get a somewhat similar treat- 
ment. 

When people ask for information over the 'phone,, 
give it to them. If you haven't it in your head, get 
it just as if they were in your presence. When you 
say you don't know, you deliberately pass the cus- 
tomer on to another store, and possibly that cus- 
tomer may get the kind of treatment elsewhere 
that will keep him from coming back to you. You 
know what happens when a customer walks out of 

169 



Gettino More Drug Store Business 

the door saying he will be back again. He usually 
visits some other store before coming back. If you 
fail to give the information sought when it is asked 
for, you are likely to lose the opportunity to give it 
at all. 

Be as courteous over the telephone to the person 
who seems to be merely an inquirer as to the person 
who is obviously a buyer. You never know when 
an inquiry today may develop into a sale tomorrow, 
and you never know when an inquirer treated well 
will send you another customer later. You can 
make people feel all right or all wrong over the tele- 
phone, and according as they feel, so they will act 
about your store. 

Your telephone is there for use, for people to use 
in calling you up. That is why you pay rental for 
it. Remind people that your store is no farther 
away than their telephone, and when business comes 
that way, take proper care of it. 

You can never teach the public to remember 
such a number as 7396 There are too many kinds 
of figures in the number. Simplify it. Get as low 
a number as you can if it is a good one. Number 
1 is of course ideal, and then come 11, in, mi, 
222, 2233, 1,000, 1234, 9876, etc. Numbers having 
some special association which makes them easy to 
remember maybe the year, your street number, 
number 13 or 23. Advertise your number, of 
-course, putting it on all of your advertising matter. 

See that your telephone is never out of order 
longer than necessary. Don't let it stand waiting 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

for the repair man to take care of when he " gets 
around to it." Get him there at once. Arrange, if 
possible, to have calls turned in to some nearby 
'phone where you can perhaps place a clerk tempo- 
rarily while your own instrument is out of order. 

Don't let the instrument go in a half efficient 
condition. Have a good one, the best you can get, 
even if it costs more, and see that it is always work- 
ing right. It costs no more for the rent of the best 
'phone than for a poor instrument. You cannot 
give satisfactory service with an unsatisfactory tele- 
phone. When people find they do not hear well 
telephoning to your store, they call another store 
next time. 

Pay careful attention to the way you and your 
clerks talk over the telephone. Enunciate your 
words distinctly. Don't clip them short. Speak 
deliberately enough to be understood. Trying to 
make yourself heard does not mean trying to speak 
louder. Volume of sound will not make up for 
careless enunciation and haste. 

Talk into the receiver instead of at the floor or 
ceiling, and hold the receiver in front of your mouth 
and close enough to get the full vibration of your 
voice. Throw your voice forward as a singer is 
trained to do, instead of talking back in your throat. 
Take the gum out of your mouth (and leave it out). 
If you are smoking, lay your cigar aside. Give your 
telephone every chance to do its work right. 

Perhaps you are not very sure of how your tele- 
phone is served when you are away from the store. 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

Call up your store once in a while and ask how 
things are getting along. Take note of how prompt 
a reply you get and what kind of a " hello " you get 
from the clerk. Let somebody else call up in your 
presence if you prefer. Don't worry about this 
being detective work. You have a right, in fact, it 
is your duty, to know how you are being served in 
your absence. You are paying for the right kind 
of service. You can hardly know too much about 
the way your store is run while you are not there. 

It is a good plan to have the clerks understand 
that you have the telephone for business rather 
than for social uses. It may seem like being a little 
close to object to the boys using the telephone all 
they want to, but it is not that you grudge any pos- 
sible expense, but that it means that customers 
may call up and find the "wire busy" and turn 
elsewhere at times, which might cost you the loss 
of valuable orders, or even a customer. If you have 
more than one telephone, and you should if the 
business warrants it, make it a rule that employes 
can use one 'phone when the other is not busy. 
Explain that you are not a telephone tightwad, but 
that you are anxious not to lose any trade. 

If you fail to get your money's worth out of your 
telephone rental, you have nobody to blame but 
yourself. The wires are there and there is business 
waiting to come over them. Educate the public to 
use your 'phone, and treat them right when they 
do use it. 



172 



CHAPTER XXII 

Message to the Druggist's Wife 

Perhaps your wish is for diamonds, for automo- 
biles, for Paris clothes, or for Oriental rugs. With- 
out a doubt there are many things you would like 
that more money would buy. 

You not infrequently wish the drug business 
brought bigger returns and paid bigger net profits. 
You wish this because you would like too see your 
husband better paid for the hard work he does, and 
because of the many things you would like that you 
now go without. 

But I doubt whether it has occurred to you that 
you might be helping to make the family business 
produce more. Of course you do help. The work 
you do in the home is just as much a part of the 
business of the family, and a part of supporting it, 
as the work your husband does in the store, and 
you ought to receive a definite portion of the income 
as your salary to be used as you want to use it. 

No matter how much of this kind of help you are 
giving, there are other ways in which you can be of 
more direct service. It is not necessary for you to 
go into the store and work to make the business 
grow. You can use your brains to that end with- 
out becoming a saleslady|or an office girl. Your 
woman's viewpoint, your woman's intuition, your 
other qualifications, will enable you to give advice 
about the management of the store that should not 
be ignored. If your husband has the idea that a 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

woman can know nothing about how a drug store 
ought to be run, ask him what sex comprises nine- 
tenths of his customers and whether it is not rea- 
sonable to suppose that one of that sex might know 
something about what she likes and what other 
women like in a drug store. 

The first thing to do to help your husband in 
making a success of his business is to take a real 
interest in that business, not merely in what it pro- 
duces. The next thing is to show that interest. 
A large proportion of wives of druggists fail to 
show such an interest in the development of the 
business as will encourage their husbands taking 
them into confidence about it. 

I know, of course, that a part of the lack of obvi- 
ous interest on the part of these wives is due to the 
attitude of husbands who think their wives cannot 
understand business and that it is not worth while 
to try and show them about it. Don't be satisfied 
to allow your husband to continue in any such belief 
as that regarding your lack of intelligence. You 
can comprehend anything about the business that 
he can comprehend, and you can see farther through 
many problems. 

Once really interested in the business and in see- 
ing what you can do to help develop it, you will find 
opportunities opening all the time. You will go into 
the store with different eyes and you will find your- 
self taking notice of the ways in which the store 
interior might be made more attractive to feminine 
eyes. You will be comparing your husband's store, 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

your store, with other drug stores you have seen r 
and right away you will want to know why your 
store cannot be made to look as nice as Somebody's, 
or why it wouldn't be easy to use the same kind of 
arrangement you saw in a drug store in Some-other- 
town. 

You will notice dust and disorder where the men> 
have passed it by. You will see the fly-specked 
show cards that have become inconspicuous to the 
workers in the store because they have been there 
so long. You will see why patrons may not be 
pleased with goods that are being handed out in 
shop-worn cartons. Many little detrimental condi- 
tions, which, like the ticking of the clock, have 
become unnoticed and almost unnoticeable, you will 
observe because you can look at the store with the 
eyes of an outsider. 

If you have been the kind of a wife who has- 
visited the store only when in need of money or of 
something you could not leave it to your husband to 
choose and bring to you, you have been neglecting; 
your opportunities, not to say your duties. 

Your husband wants, or at least needs, more than 
anything else to find out what the public thinks of 
his store and of its service. You can find out more 
along this line in a week than he could find out in a 
year. Your own intuition and observation will tell 
you more than he can find out by asking others. 

If he is failing to get his share of the perfume 
trade, very likely you can tell him off-hand why it 
is so. If there is something about his location or 

175 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

about the manners of his clerks or about the way 
the telephone business is handled, something that 
is displeasing to the feminine public, you ought to 
be able to put your finger on the trouble. 

Your husband is an experienced merchandiser. 
He knows salesmanship and he thinks he knows 
display. But you understand femininity and the 
little illogical likes and dislikes of womankind. You 
may not be logical and your husband may think 
that logical explanations are against your reasoning, 
but your intuition and the conclusions you some- 
times reach by jumping at them will be right when 
his logic is wrong. 

Study the advertising pages of the magazines for 
new goods you think your husband could sell in his 
store. Study the tastes and fads of the women you 
meet to discover why they are sending out of town 
for goods your store might supply to them if it had 
them in stock. 

Study the methods of the stores that reach after 
your patronage with their advertising methods. The 
way the dry goods store or the shoe man or the 
milliner succeed in interesting you to the extent of 
wanting to buy their goods may be a way in which 
your store could interest customers in its lines. 

And then study the drug journals your husband 
takes. This is one of the most important means of 
getting in closer touch with the business. Get him 
to bring home each drug journal. Go through every 
one, from cover to cover, advertising pages and all. 
You will see many opportunities there that the men 

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Getting More Drug Store Business 

have passed by. It may be that your husband feels 
that he is too busy to read the drug journals. You 
can be his representative in this. He needs to know 
what they contain. It is scarcely possible for a man 
to run a pharmacy in an up-to-date and successful 
manner and not read the trade journals. Perhaps 
you have a good deal of time to read and can make 
this your greatest means of assisting the business. 

There are many articles in the drug store that 
women hesitate to buy while men are standing 
around the store. If your store is losing a most 
desirable and profitable form of business because of 
the presence of men friends of your husband or of 
his clerks, you are in a position to discover this fact 
and make it clear. 

When it comes to choosing new side lines, you 
can help wonderfully in getting the right ones. 
Where your husband only surmises that there is a 
demand for a certain kind of goods he does not 
keep, but might, you are in a position to know 
about the demand. And what you do not know, 
you can find out by a little discreet questioning 
among your acquaintances. You can act as a scout 
for the store in seeking new opportunities for 
broadening the stock. 

In the way of added equipment, such as show 
cases and fixtures, your opinion ought to be worth 
much. 

You know how conveniences for the display of 
goods appeal to you in the dry goods stores. Per- 
haps your husband does not realize the importance 

177 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

of display fixtures. Perhaps he regards the buying* 
of a new showcase as a useless expense. You 
should be in a position to tell him whether or not 
he can make his stock more attractive to women 
customers by the addition of new cases, whether he 
is showing his goods well enough or not. 

Even though your husband's store already pro- 
vides you with all the necessaries of life and perhaps 
with its luxuries, still it is important that you help 
him to grow further, if only because he is ambitious 
and wants to become a more successful business 
man. 

Druggists 7 wives, as a class, are more than ready 
to cooperate with their husbands. Now and then 
there is one who feels above her husband's business, 
wishes he were not running a store. Now and then 
one feels an utter distaste for all things connected 
with making money, though there is never any dis- 
taste for spending it. Now and then one may not 
care whether her husband succeeds or not. None 
of these are you, however. You are one who wants 
to help, both for the results obtainable and for the 
pleasure of helping the man whose life is devoted 
to making you happy and comfortable. 

As a woman you have the feminine viewpoint in 
looking at the store. As an outsider (speaking 
technically), you know how the store and its service 
appear to the public. As a wife you are in a posi- 
tion to tell the proprietor candidly what you think. 
How, then, can anyone be of greater assistance in 
the development of the business ? 

i 7 8 



CHAPTER XXIII 
To Have the Best Clerks 

The usual method of building up a force of good 
clerks is to keep watch of the clerks in the various 
drug stores and, when a new man is needed, hire 
the best one in sight. By following this plan a 
druggist can get together a high-class force and he 
will be paying top salaries. 

One trouble with this plan for very general use is 
that there are not many " best " clerks and not 
enough even " good " ones to go around. 

Another trouble is that it means paying the biggest 
wages of any druggist in town. The good men 
cannot be pulled from the other stores unless they 
are offered more money than they were getting. 

So the plan of picking out the best timber avail- 
able, wherever it may be found, cannot be recom- 
mended. It could not be followed by more than a 
few stores, and those few would have to be the ones 
with the most capital. 

There is another and a saner method that can be 
followed, though it is perhaps harder work. It is 
that of developing the clerks into the kind of help 
wanted, eliminating, of course, those who are not 
capable of development — who are hopelessly in- 
efficient. 

If it is a fair question, what are you doing to make 
your clerks better help, beyond, possibly, paying 
them a little more money as they show better 
ability ? 

179 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

When you employ a green hand who knows noth- 
ing about the drug business, you try to get him 
familiar with the stock of such things as he is at 
liberty to sell. The first thing you do is to try to 
make him self-supporting, good enough, so he will 
be worth what you pay him. That is done, really, 
as a selfish measure. Then you begin letting him 
learn something about drugs under proper super- 
vision, if he shows a desire to learn. If he is satis- 
fied to jog along without learning much of anything 
of drugs, you generally do not insist. You reason 
that it is his funeral if he won't try to learn. 

There are two kinds of young men looking for 
drug store employment. One young fellow prefers 
a drug store job because it looks a little more genteel. 
The other one wants a position in a good drug store 
because he takes pharmacy as a serious occupation 
and wants to learn it. 

So one of the things that is going to help a drug- 
gist to have good clerks is to develop a reputation 
for being anxious to see his clerks improve and make 
the most of themselves. The only way to get that 
reputation is to deserve it. The druggist who stops 
with merely being a boss will find that his clerks 
will feel just the same interest in him and in the 
business that he feels in them. 

Each clerk presents an individual problem, as 
far as personal development is concerned, and an 
employer ought to find means of getting so well 
acquainted with each that he will know what the 
clerk likes and wants to do and, so far as possible, 

1 80 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

what he aims to make of his life. The closer the 
clerk and the proprietor are to one another, the 
better work the clerk will do. 

A druggist ought to know the family conditions 
of every one in his store. He should know what 
demands there are upon the clerk for money, and 
how much he can save each month if he is willing 
to try. After the proprietor has paid him his wages 
the money is his for any use he sees fit to make of 
it, but as a personal friend you are interested in 
seeing that the money is not wasted, and of course 
you realize that the clerk who does waste his money 
is going to be tempted to waste it in ways that will 
react to his and to your disadvantage. At all events 
a clerk will be a better clerk if his financial affairs 
are in good order, and this is without saying any- 
thing about the chances of his becoming dishonest 
if he is always short of money and spends more 
than he earns. 

Anything a man can do to make the working con- 
ditions of the store better will help in keeping better 
clerks. If the prescription desk is ill-equipped, 
supplied only with old and broken spatulas, gradu- 
ates with broken bases, scales that have to be 
doctored up every few days to secure anything like 
accuracy from them, with unsystematic arrange- 
ment of supplies and fixtures and poisons, we can- 
not expect clerks to find it a pleasure to work there. 

If a store lacks the necessary equipment for keep- 
ing the place clean — a poor old broom, scarcely 
any dust cloths, a broken stepladder, worn-out 

181 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

sponges — it cannot be expected that the boys who 
do the cleaning will do it well. They take their 
cues from the tools with which they have to work. 

If we allow broken glass in our show-case or else- 
where to remain unrepaired indefinitely, we may be 
sure it will have its effect in making the employees 
careless about the looks of that case and others. 

If there is no place where a clerk can wash up 
and brush his hair and do it without having to use 
a dirty old towel and an uninviting lavatory it can't 
even be hoped that clerks will improve in appear- 
ance. This is important from every point of view, 
and there should be ample accommodations of this 
kind. 

Some clerks seem always to have a group of 
acquaintances standing around, waiting to gossip 
with them. Much as the clerks may like this visit- 
ing habit, it is not compatible with good service and 
must be eliminated. But don't think that in putting 
an end to it you are offending any good clerk. 
There are good clerks who are embarrassed by the 
tendency of their friends to loaf in the store, but 
they do not know just how to avoid it. 

Any druggist will find that in talking over plans 
with clerks he will receive from them some valuable 
suggestions. The brains of the store are not all 
concentrated under the hat of the proprietor. Some 
of the future's best proprietors may be passing 
through the store as clerks, and it is a mistake to 
think that because they are employees they are 
barren of ability to think and devise. 

182 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Now and then a druggist has the idea that it is a 
mistake to develop in a clerk the ability that makes 
a good manager or proprietor, for fear that clerk 
might start a store in competition. The new stores 
and the new managers are going to come anyway, 
and it is mighty poor business to put up with inade- 
quate service just because making a man a good 
clerk might some day make him a live competitor. 

No man need lay awake nights fearing that the 
secrets of his success will leak out. If they are 
worth anything they have been observed long since. 

Developing more friendly relations between the 
proprietor and the clerks and getting rid of the 
u I'm the boss " attitude is a real help in many ways. 
The tendency of the times is away from the sharply- 
drawn line separating the boss from his employees, 
and this is true in drug stores as well as in factories. 
Make your business more of a mutual affair and 
make your relations with clerks those of mutual 
interest. Then you will find your store getting the 
best available clerks and holding them. 



183 



CHAPTER XXIV 
A Chapter for Clerks 

Salesmanship is helped a great deal by developing 
a friendly relation between the clerk and the cus- 
tomer. This is made easier by a common interest. 
You, the clerk, and your customer will have a com- 
mon interest if you develop an actual or an apparent 
interest in something which has a special interest 
for the customer. 

Most of the people who come into the store have 
fads or hobbies of one kind or another, and if they 
do not show any interest about anything else you 
mention, they will show an interest in that fad when 
you talk about it or when you give them a chance to 
talk about it. 

Not being a mind reader, you cannot know what 
a man's special interest is without some source of 
information, and unless you are a veritable human 
filing cabinet or card index, you cannot remember 
the fads of hundreds of people, or even of scores, 
unless you have help. Help is simple enough in 
the form of a vest pocket memorandum in which 
you set down, alphabetically indexed the names of 
the people you meet and opposite those names, the 
special interests of each. To find out what fads to 
mention, note the conversation of the people you 
meet, inside the store or out. Notice what cus- 
tomers discuss when other clerks are waiting on 
them. 

Develop a little Sherlock Holmes ability and you 
184 



Getting More Dgug Store Business 

will easily discover this man to be an enthusiastic 
amateur photographer, that one to be a connoisseur 
in pipes, this woman to be a devoted Red Cross 
worker. 

It may seem foolish to be listing up the people of 
your town in a little book and itemizing their habits, 
but there is nothing foolish about it. It is business.. 
If one customer is crazy about golf, let him talk 
golf to you. He will go away pleased with himself. 
Talk baseball to the baseball fan. You do not need 
to know all about these subjects. Just know enough 
to ask a few intelligent questions. Nine times in 
ten the customer will want to do the talking on the 
subject and the tenth time he will do it if he is 
encouraged. 

I don't mean to say that talking to a woman about 
Red Cross work will help to sell her a better hot 
water bottle than she would otherwise have bought.. 
You do not want to mix up outside talk and selling 
talk. The talk about the fad of the customer is a. 
matter for casual conversation while you wrap up 
the parcel, while you make change, while you escort 
the customer to the door. It serves to taper off 
from business and to send the customer away feel- 
ing that you are interested in him or her for more 
than merely the money to be got out of the deal. 

It is developing friendly relations with the cus- 
tomer that makes that customer look upon your 
drug store as the regular source of supply in that 
kind of goods. 

When a customer comes in, you sell him a hair 

185 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

brush because you have the kind of hair brush he 
needs at the price he wants to pay. But you get 
him back next week for a safety razor because when 
he was in for the brush you made him feel at home 
and pleased with himself. You gave him the idea 
that you regarded him as a person of consequence 
whose trade you appreciated, and you talked to him 
and allowed him to talk about just the things he 
most enjoys talking about. 

As you get acquainted with people's fads, you get 
better acquainted with the people themselves. When 
you gain knowledge of a person's special interests, 
you very likely find there is a connection between 
those interests and the drug store. You have things 
to sell that fit in with amateur photography or golf- 
ing or motoring. 

We all like the clerk who shows an interest in 
things that interest us, particularly when he exhibits 
a willingness to listen while we talk about those 
things. We go back to the store where that clerk 
is employed. 

On what they call the "Flatiron" corner in a 
small city in the Middle West is a drug store with 
a salesman who knows how to turn chance customers 
into steady customers, and I believe that shaking 
hands the right way at the right time has a good 
deal to do with his success. 

It's easy enough to shake hands. There is more 
to his method than just sticking his hand out toward 
you at certain times. There has to be some head- 
work behind handshaking. Not everybody wants 

1 86 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

to shake hands, and even those who might be influ- 
enced that way don't want to shake hands all the 
while. 

To crowd a visitor into shaking hands against his 
inclinations is to injure your cause. It is a mistake 
to put out your hand and hold it there until the 
customer is shamed into taking it. Don't offer to 
shake hands unless it is a natural thing to do, but 
when it is a logical action, do it and do it right. 

I went into this u Flatiron " corner store one day 
to get a toothbrush. This salesman was very accom- 
modating. He didn't try to sell me the kind of 
brush he thought I ought to have instead of the one 
I wanted. Yet he tried to show me what was the 
best thing to buy, and he knew about toothbrushes. 

As I see it now, I got into conversation with him 
because he wanted to get acquainted and make me 
a regular customer. At the time, I thought I was 
the one who was getting acquainted with him. He 
found out who I was and he acted as if he was glad 
to make my acquaintance. Instead of merely wait- 
ing on me politely, he made me a friend of the store. 

Well, there was no handshaking then, which I 
call to your notice. But I had occasion to go back 
there in a couple of weeks. The same clerk was in 
sight when I went in. He was busy, but he excused 
himself for a minute and came out and shook hands 
and said he would wait on me soon if no one else 
was free first. I said I would wait. It was the 
handshake I think that made me say I would wait 
for him. He might have extended me the same 

187 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

courtesy minus the handshake and I would have 
accepted the first available clerk. 

He knew how to shake hands, which had a good 
deal to do with it. He also knew when. If he had 
pounced upon me with the college freshman wrench, 
or if he had stuck out a limp paw and given me a 
kind of cemetery flop, I would have been glad to be 
rid of him, but he shook hands firmly, quickly, with 
a heartiness that was welcome, and with a look into 
my eyes instead of at my necktie or over my 
shoulder. He meant the cordiality he showed and 
I knew he meant it. 

Just by showing me that he was interested in me 
and considered me in a friendly way, he made me a 
friend, and a friend of the store. This would not 
work on everyone. I am sure of that because no 
one plan does. There are some people who would 
not want to shake hands at all. Different people 
must be handled differently, so you have to know 
when to shake hands as well as how to do it. 

Reading is a great help to a clerk. It is not 
merely putting in so many minutes or hours each 
day reading that counts. An hour spent in reading 
may be a damage to you instead of a help. Most 
drug clerks probably spend time enough in read- 
ing if it were spent in reading the right sort of 
things. 

Crowding into one's brain the contents of edition 
after edition of evening papers, each differing from 
the previous only in the matter of red ink head- 
lines ; poring over the last number of M America's 

1 88 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

Greatest Magazine of Mushy Stories " ; that only 
tends to make a literary sewer of one's brain. 

What a drug clerk needs to read is the sort of 
thing that will help him to a greater intelligence, a 
larger vocabulary, a better knowledge of drug store 
goods. He needs, of course, to know more about 
human nature and about life, but not as he will get 
the knowledge from reading trash. 

Any good, standard literature will help your mind, 
but the drug trade journals and books on the busi- 
ness will have the greatest value as a business help 
and they will equip you for higher positions. 

You cannot keep well informed about the condi- 
tions in the drug trade without reading the drug 
trade papers. Conditions are constantly changing. 
You cannot take proper care of your customers and 
answer their questions intelligently unless you know 
what is going on in the trade in general. The more 
a clerk knows about the line of business in which 
he is engaged, the more he will impress his cus- 
tomers as being efficient and trustworthy. To know 
more about the goods is to be able to sell more of 
them. 

The drug journals are spending their good money 
to print just the things the drug clerk needs to know 
to succeed. There is no reason in the clerk leaving 
it to the boss to read the trade papers and tell his 
force about what is in them. With all the best 
intentions in the world, the boss hasn't time to do 
that properly. It is up to you, the clerk, to find out 
for yourself what is in those papers and according 

189 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

as you do or do not study them, you will or you will 
not succeed in getting well up the ladder of promo- 
tion. You certainly cannot hope to become fitted 
to manage a store unless you are a student of the 
trade press. The man who thinks he can get ahead 
on the basis of picking up all his own knowledge 
from experience has no place in the retail drug trade 
today. We have to profit by others' experiences 
and we had to read to get them . 

Clothes may not make the man, but they may and 
often do mar him. If a drug clerk doesn't look like 
a successful and prosperous clerk, it is going to be 
much harder for him to become one. Clothes have 
great influence in giving a man confidence in himself. 

A drug clerk ought to dress well. Now, I don't 
mean by that that you should wear your Sunday- 
go-to-meeting clothes every day or that you ought 
to dress beyond your means. It costs enough now- 
adays to buy any kind of clothes, but if you are 
much of a clerk, you can earn enough to buy suita- 
ble clothes, and if you are not much of a clerk, per- 
haps you will be a better one when you get some 
good clothes and try to live up to them. 

To dress well simply means to dress so that 
people do not think about your clothes, but simply 
realize that your appearance is pleasing. You don't 
want conspicuous clothes to distract attention from 
the goods you are trying to sell. You don't want a 
brilliant red or green necktie dazzling the eyes of 
the person trying to concentrate on talcum powder 
or bath towels. 

190 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

See that your clothes fit and that they are always 
clean and pressed. Taking better care of your 
clothes will make them last longer as well as making 
them look better while they last. 

Plenty of customers will not notice it if you are 
untidily dressed, but the people whose business is 
worth most will notice it and many sensitive indi- 
viduals will simply refuse to patronize a store where 
an untidy clerk stands behind the counter. Perhaps 
people ought not to be so fussy about clerks' clothes, 
but they are and we can't go behind the returns. 

Even the folks who don't care how you look are 
not going to be offended if you look well dressed. 
Neat clothes simply add one more influence in your 
favor, and favorable influences are not so many that 
any are to be spared. 

All of your customers prefer goods with a reputa- 
tion, goods they know are all right because they 
have had them before or because they have heard 
what good goods they are. 

They may not care much about the fancy package, 
but they do feel an interest in the name on it 
because that name stands for something. The cus- 
tomer who could perhaps use to as good advantage 
a cheaper grade will often buy the better because of 
the value of the reputation. 

The goods with a reputation are goods of known 
value. We are willing enough that somebody else 
should take a chance, but we want to be sure our- 
selves. When you walk into a store to buy a hat 
or a pair of shoes, you put your trust in the kind 

191 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

you know about, the kind you have worn or have 
seen advertised for years. 

Of course, you cannot, as a drug clerk, give a line 
of goods their reputation. That is mainly up to the 
manufacturer, but you can spread that reputation and 
exalt it in people's minds so your store will profit. 

You might easily give the impression about a 
well-known article, a toilet soap, for example, that 
* There's really nothing remarkable about this soap 
after all." You might do that thoughtlessly or you 
might do it intentionally with a view to selling some 
private brand. One result of this might be to dis- 
courage the buying of such a soap at all. A cus- 
tomer led by advertising to buy a soap for shampoo 
use, expecting to use it often because it was recom- 
mended as a remedy for dandruff, if you were to 
belittle the advertised soap, might easily gain the 
impression that there is nothing to the dandruff 
claim and in the end fail to make any trial of the 
plan. This would result in loss of sales. 

You can easily impress the customer with the 
importance of the reputation the manufacturer has 
built up for an article and you can do it merely by 
the way you refer to the goods. Just a word or 
two or a tone of voice may do it. 

If you exhibit a pride in speaking of the Greene 
line of perfumes, as much as to say that mentioning 
the line is enough to carry conviction of quality, 
then you emphasize the reputation and you help 
make it possible for your store to cash in on that 
reputation. 

192 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

The buyer of anything you sell cannot be expected 
to think more highly of it than you appear to think. 
In fact, your praise of the goods is likely to be dis- 
counted somewhat, so give them as good a reputa- 
tion as they deserve. No one ever decides against 
a purchase because of the widespread good reputa- 
tion of the article. 

Do you find yourself compelled to reply frequently 
to customers^ queries, "I don't know?" If you 
do, then I doubt very much whether you are making 
good. You cannot give satisfaction either to your 
employer or to your customers as long as you con- 
tinue to admit to people that you do not know the 
things they have a right to expect you to know. 

It is your job to inform yourself fully about the 
goods you sell. You ought to keep studying about 
them. The general public does not pretend to know 
about drugs. It pays you a profit on them for the 
knowledge you are supposed to possess. 

The fact that you are a retail clerk and not engaged 
in the manufacture of the goods you sell may be one 
reason for your ignorance about them, but it is not 
an excuse. The only real explanation is lack of 
ambition to know, to equip yourself mentally for 
your job. 

You may be ignorant of everything about the 
business when you start in, but blame attaches only 
to those who remain ignorant. You owe it to your- 
self and to anyone dependent upon you to inform 
yourself as fast as you can. 

There is only one way you can convey the im- 

193 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

pression that you are informed and that is to be 
informed, actually to know what you pretend to 
know. You cannot make any success of bluffing, 
because bluffs mean mistakes, and mistakes behind 
the counter in the drug store are something more 
than mere opportunities for a little pecuniary loss. 
Mistakes mean a loss of customers at the very least. 
They may mean lives lost. 

You cannot know everything, no matter how hard 
you study, but you can keep learning and reducing 
the number of things you do not know. And instead 
of saying H I don't know " in reply to the customer's 
query, you can at least reply, " I'll find out." The 
latter answer leaves a better impression and in the 
end it gives more satisfaction. 

Part of your job is selling goods, but that is not 
all of it. The part that has the most bearing on 
your future, and a part that will make a success or 
a failure of your efforts to sell goods, is the learning 
part, the part that is constant work to eliminate the 
need for any of that "I don't know " talk. 



194 



A CATECHISM FOR DRUGGISTS 

Q. What is a druggist ? 

A. A druggist is a man who can pour a liquid 
from one bottle into another without spilling it. 

Q. What excuse is there for his existence? 

A. The excuses for his existence are three in 
number: (i) The telephone; (2) the directory; 
(3) the postage-stamp. 

Q. Has the druggist any friends ? 

A. His friends, until the day comes for collecting 
his accounts, are as the sands of the seashore. 

Q. Is one hundred per cent the average profit on 
the sales in a drug store ? 

A. One hundred per cent is regarded as the min- 
imum profit (by the public). 

Q. Is the druggist a professional man ? 

A. He is a professional man in the matter of 
education, preparation, and fitness, but an odd job 
man in the matter of fees. 

Q. Are druggists fond of recreation ? 

A. The druggist finds great sport in pill-tile golf 
and mortar polo. 

Q. What are the literary attainments of the 
druggist ? 

A. He is a frequent contributor to the powder 
paper, and his writings are often found on medical 
works. 

Q. Does the druggist see better by artificial 
light ? 

195 



Getting More Drug Store Business 

A. No, but he sees longer. Daylight is more 
particularly for people. 

Q. Is the druggist a great convenience to the 
physician ? 

A. Yes, someone has to be the goat. 

Q. Who is the druggist's goat? 

A. He has no goat. The department stores and 
chain stores have got his. 

Q. What would happen if a druggist should stop 
work when the whistle blows ? 

A. Tomorrow he would have two new compet- 
itors. 

Q. What is Pharmacy ? 

A. Pharmacy is the drug business raised to the 
nth power. 

Q. What is the druggist's favorite fad? 

A. The soda fountain. 

Q. How does a druggist recognize his intimate 
acquaintances ? 

A. They address him as " Opodeldoc," " Pepper- 
mint," "Pills," or "Squills." 

Q. How does he recognize the man who is after 
liis money ? 

A. He addresses him as " Doctor." 

Q. Is there any hope for the druggist? 

A. Yes, there is plenty of that. 



196 



Making a Drug Store Pay 




FARRIKGTOU 



How Frank Farrington built up his drug store busi- 
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his experience with the soda water trade and how he 
made the business profitable. His success with pre- 
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chapters of business getting information of this kind. 

A druggist in Texas writes, " I have not read all the 
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Cloth, 303 pages, 6x8 inches. Price postpaid #2.00 
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WAYS AND SCHEMES 
TO ATTRACT 
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HOW TO MAKE 
SHOW 
CARDS 




A Practical Treatise on 
the Fundamental Prin- 
ciples of Artistic Letter 
Mailing with Pen and 
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By CHARLES A. MILLER, 
THIS is a practical book written by a practical 
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profusely illustrated. A large number of sample 
alphabets and signs are included and in the last 
chapter are scores of snappy " catch phrases" 
that may be used as legends on window cards. 

ITS PRICE ONLY $1.00 POSTPAID 

Send in your order TO-DAY 
Using the Coupon on page 4. 



Spatula Publishing Co. 
Boston 14, Mass. 



300 



READY-TO-USE ADS 
FOR DRUGGISTS 




By Charles L. Archbold and other experts. Something 
for every department and every season. Nearly all of the 
300 ads have each an appropriate illustration which may 
be used or not as desired. The ads are so arranged that 
they may be cut out as needed and sent to your local 
paper, or to your printer as copy for counter slips. Elec- 
tros of cuts cost delivered about $ijoo each. A complete 
index, covering in different kinds of articles for which 
there are ads, makes it possible to turn instantly to just 
what is wanted. Three advertisements calling attention 
to exactly what you want to advertise, each written by an 
expert, for one cent ! Can you beat it ? 

Price postpaid, $1.00 (4s) ; with The Spatula one year, 
$1.50 (8s). 

The Spatula Publishing Co. 
Boston 14, Mass. 



